William Herschel and his work

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t'"

THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS ^ ^

EDITED BY

OLIPHANT SMEATON

William Herschel

and His Work

By James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E,

\

Previous Volume in this Series'; —

Buddha and Buddhism.

By Arthur Lillie.
For List of Volumes already issued and in preparation see end.

THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS

$

William Herschel

and His Work

By

James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E.

**The life of Herschel had the rare advantage
of forming an epoch in an extensive branch of
astronomy."

Edinburgh. T. & T. Clark

1900

N: ^

" ^ ^ ^

■^ ^ '* J

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THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC L-BRARY

917154A

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TlLE>i4.« i-'UUWDATZONS

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\cc.v/ 2.^"^ tic-

pRnmu) BY

MOBJUBOK AND OIBB LIHITKD,
FOB

T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.

liONDON : SIMPRIN, MAR8UALL, nAMILTOK, KBNT, AND CO. LIMITED.

NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

TORONTO : TUE PUBLISHERS' SYNDICATE LIMITED.

• • • _ •

• • • •

• • •

*

• > k . • •

fc • •

« • k « • •

k • • •

PREFACE

To present to the public the life and work of a man
who powerfully influenced the progress of astronomy a
century ago, and stamped on his own age as well as
ours a loftier view of Creation and its Author than was
ever before entertained, may be best done by allowing
him and his contemporaries to tell their own story,
and to relate their own impressions. We all prefer to
hear them speaking, to see them playing their parts in
life, and io Tateh L drama of Lprise, wonder, and
criticism unfolding itself in their written or printed
pages. If I have succeeded in my endeavour to tell
the story on these lines, I shall have attained the end
which I had in view when I undertook this work.
. William Herschel was not a mathematician of the
order of Newton, Laplace, or even of his own son. He
made no pretence to that high honour. His fields of
research were much simpler, though not less laborious,
and the harvests he reaped were enjoyed by mankind
without a strain on the understanding which very few
in any age are capable of. A popular exposition of
his career and his discoveries in the light of more

vi PREFACE

recent triumphs may be as easy to follow now, and as
welcome as it was in his own day.

What Sir William and Lady Huggins recently said
of their own labours with the spectroscope, Herachel
could have said a century before of the difficulties
his sister and he encountered and overcame with the
telescope : " It is scarcely possible at the present day,
when all these points are as familiar as household
words, for any astronomer to realise the large amount
of time and labour which had to be devoted to the
construction of the first star spectroscope."^

1 Atlas, 1899, p. 8.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PACK

I. THE FAMILY 1

II. THE EDUCATION 10

III. IN ENGLAND 21

IV. THE DISCOVBRY OF HERSCHEL 45

V. THE DISCOVEET OF URANUS 66

VI. ENDOWMENT OP RESEARCH 83

Til. THE GREAT TELESCOPE 106

VIII. "THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE HEAVENS " . .128

IX. THE SUN 165

X. PLANETS AND COMETS 167

XI. HERSCHEL's ENGLISH HOME 195

XII. DOUBLE STARS AND NEBULA 218

XIII. THE SURVIVOR 288

APPENDIX 257

INDEX 263

Vll

WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

CHAPTER I

THE FAMILY

Cicero in his exquisite little book, written two
thousand years ago in the infancy of astronomy, and
called Scipio's Dream, delighted the Roman world of
his day with stories of the stars, which were a mixture
of romance and truth. He formed some idea of their
movements from a rough approach that had been made
even then to a globe of the heavens, and he filled his
readers with awe at the music which was believed
to accompany their passage through space. The music
of the spheres has passed into our language and our
thoughts at the present day. But it would have been
the greatest wonder of all could Cicero have foreseen
that, more than nineteen centuries after his day, the
true music of the spheres and the truest means of
hearing it sung would be discovered by the genius,
the almost unaided genius, of " a philosopher without
the rules," a musician in the town of Bath, then a
haunt of savages or wild beasts. He was organist
in the Octagon Chapel of that city, the director of

2 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

concerts and balls in a " rendezvous of the diseased/'
where "ministers of state, judges, generals, bishops,
projectors, philosophers, wits, poets, players, fiddlers,
and buffoons" met and trifled, amid "dressing, and
fiddling, and dancing, and gadding, and courting, and
plotting." But so it was; and never were men and
pursuits so unlike brought face to face, or placed side
by side in the business of life.

When " the music and entertainments of Bath were
over for the season," and " when not a soul was seen
in the place but a few broken- winded parsons, waddling
like so many crows along the North Parade, great
overgrown dignitaries and rectors, with rubicund
noses and gouty ankles, or broad bloated faces, drag-
ging along great swag bellies, the emblems of sloth and
indigestion," this pleasant-faced director of concerts
and oratorios, this man of smiling look and noble
bearing, wearied out with the music of the season,
sought rest and refreshment in a constant and devoted
study of the higher music of the heavens. He had
none to help him but a younger sister, who was un-
willingly dragged from the concert-room and the
theatre to less congenial pursuits, and for some time a
younger brother, who was believed to play the violon-
cello divinely, and who certainly could apply himself
with credit to mechanical pursuits. With untiring
energy he worked out this ancient music of the spheres,
till the world was astonished at his success, learning
confessed her debts to his genius, and a new era
dawned in the history of science. He sprang into fame
almost at one bound,passed from theatre and music-room
to the Hall of the Royal Society, and was saluted by
organs of public opinion as an " extraordinary man."

MUTUAL AFFECTION 3

Oi the early life of this musician not much is known
beyond the brief record by his sister and fellow-
worker, Caroline Lucretia Herschel, written when
she was past eighty years of age, and twenty years
after his death. It was, as she styled it, "a little
history of her own life, 1772-1778," not intended for
the eyes of an admiring world, but prepared for her
distinguished nephew. Sir John, the only son of her
brother, Sir William Herschel. It is also a most inter-
esting story of diflSculties overcome in the pursuit of
knowledge, — difficulties that were then almost insuper-
able, — of the devoted love with which she helped to
smooth his path to fame, and of the moral beauty
which ennobled her brother's life. An affection so
touching between brother and sister is far from an
uncommon thing in the records of mankind, but it
never produced richer fruit or shone with brighter
lustre than in the lives of William Herschel and his
sister Caroline.

Frederick William Herschel, — although he dropped

the name Frederick in England after 1758, till it

reappeared in his son's name in 1792, — the fourth of a

family of ten children, was bom on November 15,

1738. His sister, Caroline Lucretia, the eighth of the

family, was bom on March 16, 1750. She was thus

nearly twelve years his junior, an interval sufficient to

surround the elder of the two with the haze of romance

in the eyes of the younger. Between them there was

a strong attachment, from the time the little sister

could show or express her feelings. From infancy to

old age he was "the best and dearest of brothers";

his son was her pet, her dearest nephew; and both

were worthy of her affection. The dependence of a

4 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

weaker nature on a stronger was not the bond that
united brother and sister in a lifelong devotion to
science and to each other. There was something more
noble. They were the two members of the family in
whom genius and perseverance united to overcome
difficulties. None of the others possessed equal genius ;
none of them were gifted with the same perseverance.
What these two undertook they did with intense
affection for each other, and with a determination not
to be baffled, where others could not be blamed had
they submitted to defeat. The other members of the
family that enter into the story of the lives of these
two were, the elder brother, Jacob, and the younger,
Alexander; the one nearly four years older than
William, and the other seven years younger. Flighty,
vain, selfish, and uncertain, Jacob was a specimen of
what the eldest brother in a family should not be, but
is frequently allowed to become by indulgent and
foolish parents. Of such inferior capacity to William
that the latter mastered their French lessons in half
the time taken by Ja<5ob, he had the power of
creating unhappiness by starting difficulties at every-
thing that was done for him ; by selfishly insisting on
travelling comfortably by post, while his father, with
an impaired constitution, and his brother William,
a fast-growing and delicate lad, were content, for
economy's sake, to trudge the weary miles homeward
on foot; by whipping his little sister, sixteen years
younger than himself, because, in her awkwardness,
she did not come up to his lordly ideas of what a
tablemaid should be to a man of his standing ; by his
bad humour when his beefsteak was hard, or because
Caroline could not use brick-dust in cleaning the little

THE CINDERELLA OF THE FAMILY 5

cutlery they possessed. There was no love lost be-
tween a brother of twenty, who could thus bully a
sister of four or five, and make himself disagreeable
all round. It would have been odd had he not sown
in the girl's mind a plentiful crop of dislike or hatred.
Alexander, so much nearer herself in age, was less
disliked, but does not seem to have been, at first, much
more loved. At one time it seemed as if he thought
himself entitled to imitate the lordly ways of Jacob,
and his contempt of the little sister, shy, small for her
age, and uneducated even in the family inheritance,
musia William, on the other hand, waa a family
idol to the girl and her parents. When she failed to
find him and her father on the parade-ground after a
year's absence from home, and returned to the house
to see them all seated at table, "my dear brother
William threw down his knife and fork, and ran to
welcome, and crouched down to me, which made me
forget all my grievances." The young soldier, the
hero of her romance, was then eighteen years of age ;
the girl was six. Could a more charming picture of
brotherly love have been drawn, or a firmer foundation
laid for the sisterly affection that continued unim-
paired through half a century of toilsome and absorb-
ing work ? With much diflBculty the girl was allowed
to receive some sewing lessons at a school where
girls of higher rank were taught. It was the means
of introducing her to a young lady who, as Mrs.
Beckedorff, became a lifelong friend and companion
at Windsor, and, sixty years later, at Hanover.
Caroline was, as she says herself, the Cinderella of
the family. " I could never find time," she wrote in
1838, " for improving myself in many things I knew,

6 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

and which, after all, proved of no use to me afterwards,
except what little I knew of music, being just able to
play the second violin of an overture or easy quar-
tette, which my father took a pleasure in teaching
me. N.B, — When my mother was not at home.
Amen." ^

The family, though poorly provided with worldly
goods, was richly endowed with mental gifts, which
had only to be well laid out to lead to wealth and
fortune. The father, Isaac Herschel, came of a sturdy
Protestant stock, which, about a century before his
birth on January 14, 1707, escaped persecution in
Moravia by emigrating to Saxony. Isaac's father was
there employed in the Royal gardens at Dresden, and
earned a name for himself as a skilful landscape
gardener. A passionate love of music, however, com-
pelled the son to forsake his father's business of
gardening, and betake him to his favourite study
under a hautboy player in the Royal band. After
pursuing the study at Berlin and Potsdam, he journeyed
in 1731 to Hanover, where he became a hautboy player
in the band of the Elector's Guards, and where he
married in the year following. George ii. was then
Elector of Hanover. To that connection with Britain
was sometimes due our entanglement in the politics
and wars of the Continent, and the bringing across
of Hanoverian soldiers, perhaps of Hessians also, to
defend this country when threatened with invasion
by France. War brought its troubles to the Herschel
family. From these troubles arose singular com-
pensations for the advancement of science, the honour
of the family, and the welfare of mankind. On the

^ Memoirs, p. 299.

FATHER AND MOTHER 7

night after the battle of Dettingen (June 16, 1743)
the bandmaster of the Guards, as the father had then
become, lay in a wet furrow, which sowed in him the
seeds of an illness that never left him during the rest
of his life. It spread a cloud of gloom over the family
circle for nearly twenty years.

Isaac Herschel was a man of intelligence, qualified
to talk on higher matters than flute-playing or band
music. But he was not head of his own house. Like
many foolish fathers, he allowed the eldest son to
usurp his place, nor did he shield the younger children
from the eldest's bullying. Apparently the mother,
a woman of small intelligence, had also a favourite in
her eldest daughter, Sophia, who lived away from
home, and whom Caroline did not see till she came
back to be married to Griesbach, a musician of com-
monplace ability in the Guards' band. Sophia was
then about twenty-one, Caroline four or five. Caroline
liked neither her sister nor her sister's husband. But
the married daughter did not remain long away from
the family she left. War broke out, one of the inter-
minable wars of Frederick the Great, which drove her
back to her father's house. There the impatience of
her temper and her dislike of children drove Caroline
from little warmth or affection within the house to
cold and neglect outside. What neither father nor
mother would have allowed in a well-regulated family,
the child was forced to endure, with sullen and natural
resentment. An elder brother and an elder sister con-
sidered the position of household drudge good enough
for Caroline, without schooling, and even without
sewing. While the father and sons showed unusual
knowledge, and even developed somewhat of genius

8 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

for music, this neglected girl was neither taught nor
allowed to sing a note. Her anchor of safety lay in
the simple devotion with which, even then, she wor-
shipped "her best and dearest of brothers, William."
She herself called it the affection of "a well-trained
puppy-dog " for its master. In after life she showed
more regard for her sister's son, George Griesbach,
one of the musicians of George iii.'s court, than she
ever entertained for his father or mother. But her
affection for him was lukewarm compared with the
intensity of its glow towards another nephew, the son
of her brother WiUiam, the distinguished mathema-
tician and philosopher, Sir John F. HerscheL Of the
latter she can never speak enough, nor in terms of
praise sufficiently high : and deservedly.

Such was the household William Herschel was
brought up in. It was, or might have been, a home
of genius. The father had much in him of music
and of knowledge generally to fit him for the training
and encouragement of his sons. But they were not
all equally worthy of his regard. Ill health, while
they were still children, the eldest not more than ten,
may have weakened his vital power at the time when
it was most indispensable for him firmly to hold the
household helm and keep every member in his own
place. His wife was badly fitted to rule or guide
their little community of boys and girls. She had to
fight a battle with privation and a small income ; she
had to face the hostile occupation of the country,
and the unscrupulous exactions of invaders. Driven
from pillar to post, she pampered some of her sons,
she petted a favoured daughter, and turned another
daughter, more deserving of affection, into a household

THE MOTHER'S FOOLISHNESS 9

slave. It was a poor home, badly governed, but rich
in promise. She nearly wrecked everything by her
folly ; but that folly was strangely overruled for the
welfare of humanity and the honour of her own
children.

The Memoirs of Caroline Herschel furnish the only
trustworthy account of the means, by which genius
and hard work combined laid the foundation, on which
her brother s fame was built. At the same time they
have left room for myths or legends to supplement
facts or to fill up gaps in the story of the first half of
his life. This is unfortunate ; but it was known to
his sister, who was unwilling or unable to apply a
remedy. It is thus not always easy to present the
truth of these early yeara So busy was she kept that
in 1786 she writes, "For these last three years I have
not had as many hov/ra to look in the telescope."

CHAPTER II

THE EDUCATION

The education of a child is commonly supposed to
begin and end at school. It neither begins there nor
ends there. Reading, writing, and arithmetic may,
and should, be taught in every school, as the indis-
pensable equipment of a boy or girl for the battle
of life. But the real school is the world of life,
however wide or however narrow its boundaries may
be. Surroundings of one kind or another encompass
child and man alike, forming the outer and larger
school, in which all are entered as pupils for self-
control, for truthfulness, for honour, and other often
neglected but necessary virtues. In the elementary
school for reading, writing, and arithmetic, Caroline
Herschel can scarcely be said ever to have been entered.
She was a neglected child in these respects. To a
woman of her quickness of parts and calculating
power the multiplication table continued to be a
puzzle throughout life. Elementary learning was con-
sidered to be of little or no use to a girl who was to
attend her brother's whims, cook his dinner, and brush
his clothes. The mother, proud of her sons, took no
thought of her little daughter, except to reckon up
that the girl might save her a servant's wagea Other
mothers have committed the same blunder since her

10

THE GARRISON SCHOOL ii

days with equally evil results. The ill health of the
f ather, and their straitened means, may help to explain
this neglect of the little girl, without excusing it.
Up to the close of a long life she never ceased to
regret and reprobate the treatment to which she was
subjected in childhood. But, unlike her youngest
brother, Dietrich, she laid no part of the blame for
this neglect on their invalid father. "Dietrich," she
says, "never recollected the eight years' care and
attention he had received from his father, but for ever
munnured at having received too scanty an education,
though he had the same schooling we all of us had
had before him."

It was diflferent with her brother William. In
Hanover there was at that time a garrison school,
taught by a capable teacher. Master and pupil, find-
ing in each other what the other wanted, were a credit
to their fellowship in learning. All the children were
in the habit of attending this school, from the age of
two to fourteen ; but Caroline seems to have got little
good from it, and at two or even four years of age
she would have been much better at home under a
another's care. The teacher had some knowledge of
Latin and arithmetic. Out of school hours he im-
parted to William Herschel all he knew of these
branches French the boy also learned, as the polite
language of the world of civilised men, and the tongue
of the enemies of his King and country. > English is
not mentioned among his acquirements, although the
Elector of Hanover was then George ii. of England ;
but a King who spoke indifferent English at Windsor,
or none at all, would not encourage the study of it
in the garrison school at Hanover. Even the German

12 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

language did not then rank high in the estimation
of kings and princelings who made a pretence to
literature. It was the tongue of rude and ignorant
boors. Among them French was the language of
learning, literature, and politeness. William Herschel
was too quick-witted to neglect the language of the
country he was destined to look forward to for prefer-
ment. He became a proficient in English, though at
the best it was sometimes dictionary English, with
its long Latin words, that cropped up in his written
pages. Towards the end of his life, his mother tongue,
the rude language of Germany, as it was then deemed,
became somewhat unfamiliar to him. His sister Caro-
line, after fifty years' residence in this country, had to
consult an English dictionary to find or recover words
sufficiently strong to describe the objects of her dis-
like. Her brother, after a longer residence in England,
found difficulty in carrying on a conversation in
German with the Chancellor of the University of
Halle, who paid him a visit at Slough shortly before
the close of his life: "All accounts from his native
country seemed to please him, although the German
language had become somewhat less familiar to his
ear." So the visitor wrote. Both brother and sister
appear to have felt as Caroline felt when she wrote
in her eighty-sixth year that she was a countrywoman
of the Duke of Cambridge and would not be a
Hanoverian.

The schooldays of William Herschel ended at the
age of fourteen ; his real education then began. Under
the careful instruction of his father, he had become
an excellent performer on the oboe and violin. But
the father had higher views for a young man of his

SCIENTIFIC TALKS 13

ability than to see him enrolled as an oboist in the
band of George 11. 's Hanover Guarda That was easy
of attainment : it was merely the lowest round of the
ladder, and did not lead to any height. The eldest
brother, Jacob, became organist, at the age of nineteen,
in the garrison chapel: he cannot be said to have
risen higher. Even then the younger brother was
cherishing wider, loftier flights for his ambition than
would satisfy a father's eagerest wish in the way of
musical success. What these flights were we can
dimly see in a few glimpses of mental progress made
by the yoimg bandsman during the next few years.

The two brothers, it seems, were often introduced
to take part as solo performers in concerts at the
Electoral court. Keen criticism of the music followed
on their return home. But the criticism was varied
by philosophical and scientific talk, which frequently
lasted all night. What was the cause of this unusual
interlude in a musician's life we are not informed.
But among the subjects of discussion were astronomy
and mechanics, whether the taste for these studies was
awakened or not by what they saw and heard at the
court festivities. William Herschel himself showed a
decided turn towards the invention and making of
mechanical appliances, simple things it might be, but
the first appearance above ground of what was destined
to be a rich harvest. Encouraged by his father, he
persevered in exercising his skill. Long years after-
wards, the elements of mechanical skill which were
thus fostered, developed into the works which enabled
him to search the depths of space for its innumerable
worlds.

Another subject which Isaac Herschel was not

14 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

ignorant of, and seems to have taught some of his
children, was a knowledge of the starry heavens.
Caroline, whd enjoyed little of her infirm father's
instruction and guidance, was sometimes taught by
him to recognise stars and constellations in the cloud-
less nights ; but the teaching then given was not seed
that fell on a good soil. With William it was diflTerent.
He was of an age and a disposition to be fascinated
by the subject, and the golden hopes which the science
at that time held out to astronomers must have
coloured the dreams of many a youthful star-gazer.
The British Government offered a great reward for
the best means of finding the longitude of a ship's
place at sea. A clockmaker might solve the problem
by ingenious contrivances, and win the reward; or
an astronomer, by more refined and more subtle
methods, might furnish the sailor with knowledge
and safety, and carry off the prize. William Herschel
was a boy of thirteen when a young mathematician,
almost self-taught, was appointed to a chair
in the Hanoverian University of Qottingen, not
forty miles from the town of Hanover.^ It was John
Tobias Mayer, who taught there from 1751 till his
death in 1762, and whose widow got three thousand
pounds of the reward for the solution he left behind
him of the problem of the longitude. It is probable
enough that the name of this famous astronomer,
with whose writings Herschel became familiar in

^ The favotir with which Gottingen was regarded by George ii., who
founded both Uniyersitj and Observatory, oonld not &il to exercise an
influence on Herschel and his father. In 1756 the King presented the
Obserratory with a mural quadrant of six feet radius, made by Bird
of London.

ASTRONOMY IN THE AIR 15

after years, was of common occurrence in the talks
of father and son. Nothing is more likely, for other
great names are known to have been discussed be-
tween them. Another astronomer, afterwards a friend
of Hersehel, made himself a name in the scientific
world, Schroeter, of the Observatory at Lilienthal, in
the Duchy of Bremen, about twenty miles from Hano-
ver. Gibers and Harding, two of the astronomers who
afterwards undertook to rival Hersehel in the dis-
covery of planets, belonged to the same neighbourhood.
There was at that time something in the air of
Hanover and its neighbourhood that turned the eyes
of young men of genius to the stars. It is therefore
not surprising that students of the sciences so eminent
as Newton, Leibnitz, and Euler entered freely into
the talks between the father and his two eldest boys.
Jacob preferred sleep to talk. William never grew
tired of talk on men and subjects so attractive. He was
surrounded by living and famous astronomers. Their
works and fame served, probably, to nurse in him the
spark of science that his father thus lighted or cherished.
The prospect of war with France in 1755 gave
Hersehel an opportunity of visiting the country of his
dreams, England. Discontent was rife in our large
towns ; incapacity was still more rife in the army and
navy. It was the age of Admiral Byng, of Lord
George Sackville, and of the Duke of Cumberland.
The French king was known to be planning, and was
likely to carry into effect, a descent on the English
coast. In April it was supposed the storm would
burst on Ireland, for that island was so defenceless
that ten thousand troops might walk from one end of
it to the other. In October it was reported that a

I

1 6 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

flotilla of flat-bottomed boats was assembled at Dunkirk
to transport an army to the English coast. The specu-
lations of politicians were prefaced with, " If no French
come." The situation was pronounced by some of them
comical, and the nation drolL In March of the fol-
lowing year " the King notified the invasion to both
Houses, and his having sent for Hessians. There were
some dislikes expressed to the latter ; but, in general,
fear preponderated so much that the cry was for
Hanoverians too." Hanoverian officers were even pre-
ferred to the native-bom. But the cynics of London
laughed, invented, and lied. "They said that the
night the Hanover troops were voted, George ii. sent
for his German cook, and said, ' Get me a very good
supper; get me all de varieties: I don't mind ex-
pense.' " Exquisites, like Walpole, were wondering
where their foreign defenders would be encamped. If
the Hanoverians should be stationed at Hounslow,
" Strawberry Hill would become an inn, and all the
misses would breakfast there, to go and see the
camp ! " ^ Even in George Townshend's " admirable "
cartoon, "which so diverted the town," "the Hano-
verian drummer, Ellis," " though the least like, was a
leading feature." Instead of fighting. Englishmen were
sneering or laughing.

It was in these days of fear and threatened invasion
that the King's Hanoverian Guards were ordered to
England.^ Isaac Herschel and his two sons, Jacob and

1 Walpole, Letten, iii. 109, 164, 165, 206, 209, 217.

'*' Towards the end of the year 1755," Caroline Herschel says
(p. 8). This does not seem to be correct. Horace Walpole's Letters
wonld lead a reader to place it several months later, in 1 756. Neither she
nor her brother seems to hare been sore of the date. (Memoirs, p. 218.)

VISIT TO ENGLAND 17

William, were in the band of the regiment. Whether
they encamped on Hounslow Heath and annoyed
Strawberry Hill or not is unknown ; but for a whole
year they remained in England, till apparently the
invasion of Hanover by the French rendered their
presence necessary at home. There was no invasion
of England except by a flute-player, who saw the com-
forts of the land, and came back a year later to make
it and himself famous in the arts of peace, and to give
Walpole a chance of handing down to posterity in his
Letters the wonder excited, even among idlers and
diners-out, by the earnest labours of William Herschel.
The only spoil the musician carried home with him
to Hanover was a copy of Locke's Essay con-
cerning Human Understanding, on which he spent
as much of his pay as he could spare. His brother
Jacob took back some English goods and some fine
clothes.

Caroline Herschel is of opinion that had it not been
for the war troubles, in which Hanover was now
involved, and had peace allowed these scenes of happy
discussion between father and son to continue till their
natural application to practice, her brother would have
given proof of his inventive genius long before it
revealed itself, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.
Prophecies of this kind after the event are not un-
common, but they may be as groundless as they are
uncertain. Seed was sown in Herschel's mind by an
enlightened father, who " was a great admirer of
astronomy, and had some knowledge of that science."
The boy of sixteen was also encouraged by him to try
his hand on mechanical contrivances, of which one took
an especial hold on his sister's childish mind, " a neatly

1 8 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

turned 4-inch globe, upon which the equator and ecliptic
were engraved." But it was from a passionate devotion
to music that the father looked for fame and money
for his two sons. He seems just to have missed that
aim with the flighty Jacob ; ^ it is pardonable to doubt
that he could ever have attained it with the staid and
persevering William. Neither of them had in him the
making of a Handel, who was then, and had long been,
the ornament of the English and Hanoverian court,
and of whom the aspiring father could not fail to be
always thinking.

A greater check to progress than war or poverty
was the mothers dislike of learning. She was
resolved that, in spite of her husband's wish to
educate Caroline, nothing should be taught the girl
but what might prove useful to her as a household
drudge. She would not allow her to learn French;
she relaxed so far as to send her for two or three
months to a sewing school to be taught to make house-
hold linen, to which the girl added, out of her own
ingenuity, the making of bags and sword-knots for her
brothers' splendour at concerts, before she knew how
to make caps and furbelowa The mother made no
concealment of her reason for this unjust and narrow-
minded treatment of her daughter. Referring to later
troubles in which her own folly involved the family,
she laid the blame where it had no right to lie : " It
was her certain belief that William would have re-
turned to his country, and Jacob would not have
looked so high, if they had had a little less learning."
" There is a great simplicity in the character of this
nation," the physician of George IV. wrote of the

^ Barney, History of AfusiCf iv. 603. See infraf p. 32.

FLIGHT FROM HANOVER 19

Hanoverians, when he accompanied that King on his
visit to the Electorate in 1821. Perhaps Herschel's
mother was an example of this great simplicity, mis-
placed. At least it resulted in years and recollections
of exceeding bitterness to William Herschel and his
sister. There can be little donbt that both of them
laid on her the blame of great mistakes committed,
and grave responsibilities incurred, which darkened her
son's future life. Possibly it had something to do with
the difficulty he had, as he approached his eightieth
year, in drawing up an autobiography, as he wished to
do. He found " himself much at a loss for the dates
of the month, or even the year, when he first arrived
in England with his brother Jacob." The work was
handed over to Caroline, who undertook it with the
" proviso not to criticise on my telling my story in
my own way." Her youngest brother, Dietrich, the
scapegrace of the family, was under three years
of age when these sorrowful passages occurred in
their household history. When past seventy he was
as hard to deal with as in his teens. '* Let me touch on
what topic I would," she writes, " he maintained the
contrary, which I soon saw was done merely because
he would allow no one to know anything but himself."
There were two strains in this large family, as
there are in many others, one tending downwards,
another soaring upwards, and the former is usually
a grief to the latter. Jacob, Dietrich, and Sophia
represented the one : William, Caroline, and, in a
lesser degree, Alexander represented the other. The
only one who made a fortune was William, and
the one ' who got a larger share of it than any
of the others, even than Caroline and Alexander,

20 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

who helped him to make it, was the scapegrace,
Dietrich.^ Family histories are strange things ! And
yet Caroline at seventy-eight years of age says to
her nephew, " Whoever says too Tnuch of me says
too little of your father! and can only cause me
uneasiness/' while Dietrich never believed he got
even fair play for himself from parent, brother, or
sister.

^ See William Herschel's will, Oentleman^s MagaaiTke, vol. zcli.
Dietrich got £2000, but Alexander and Caroline got £100 a year each.
As things went in those days, the undeserving fared far better than the
really deserving.

CHAPTER III

IN ENGLAND

From the brief and guarded indications given by his
sister Caroline, then a child of seven, sitting on the
outer doorstep and watching all that took place with
the wondering eyes of childhood ; from her picture of
the mourning mother, and the parcel which she carried
containing her son's accoutrements; from her view
of the disguised brother stealing past, and from the
prohibition even to mention his name, it is plain that
WiUiam Herschel was smuggled out of Hanover in
the summer of 1757. What we might call the con-
scription was then in full force in town and country
to supply the beaten army of Cumberland with
recruit& But Herschel was a soldier, and was run-
ning away from the colours. He was of a weakly
constitution, growing rapidly, and unfit for the hard-
ships of a soldier's life. So his mother said and,
perhaps, also thought. For three months both
Hanover and England had been expecting something
to happen in the war with France. The Duke of
Cumberland, of CuUoden fame, found it necessary to
go abroad to " take command of the army of observa-
tion." But so ill was he liked in England that, though
"the drum was beat, none would list." The soldiers
under his command in Hanover, and a motley crew

21

22 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

they seem to have been, appear to have viewed his
ability as cynically as it was viewed in England.
" We hear," Horace Walpole writos, " that the French
have recalled their green troops, which had advanced
for show, and have sent their oldest regiments against
the Duke." Twelve days later, he says : " This is not
the sole uneasiness at Kensington; they know the
proximity of the French to the Duke, and think that
by this time there may have been an action: the
suspense is not pleasant." Five weeks later came the
news, " We are in a piteous way ! The French have
passed the Weser, and a courier brought word yester-
day that the Duke was marching towards them ; and
within five miles: by this time his fate is decided."
A few days more, and tidings came that " the French
attacked the Duke for three days together, and at last
defeated him: I find it is called at Kensington an
encounter of fourteen squadrons." It took place at
Hastenbeck near Hameln, on the Weser, the scene of
the Pied Piper's exploit. Whether an encounter or a
battle, it was fatal to the reputation of the Duke, and
the English officers he had with him ; and it was fatal
to Hanover, which from first to last paid more than
two millions sterling to the victors. Above all, it was
fatal to William Herschel's soldiering ; for years also
it was fatal to his prospects in life, and to his peace of
mind as well as his sister's; but, at last, it was the
beginning of his endless fame. We can almost
sympathise with a deserter from such a general,
especially when he fled to his own King for pro-
tection, not to the enemies of his country.

An anxious and far from sensible mother took
steps to save her delicate son. The French were

EXPLANATIONS OF HIS FLIGHT 23

about twenty miles to the south of the town ; the
roads were so bad that even a King's coach, sixty
years later, drawn by eight horses, could not make
a longer stage than five miles;, an invading army
would move more slowly. The north road towards
the sea was clear of the enemy: and the German
outposts extended no farther than the palace at
Herrenhausen, about a mile and a half from the
town. William Herschel passed these without molest-
ation, journeyed along the Bremen road, and at last
found his way to Hamburg, to which his trunk was
sent after him. In the following year he appears to
have crossed the sea to England. Obscurity then
covers the fugitive's wanderings for nearly ten years.
Five or six pages of sorrowful details are torn out of
his sister's journal at this point ; and the way of the
wanderer is lost in darkness. More is told by her of
the eldest brother's comings and goings, of his rude
and ungenerous treatment of her, than of the brother
whom she worshipped. We could have taken less of
Jacob, and more of William, — " the best and dearest of
brothers," — as the circumstances manifestly required.

After the lapse of seventy years Caroline Herschel
felt as keenly as she did at first the unpleasantness of
her brother's flight from Hanover. On his return as
a King's messenger in 1786, bearing a King's present
to the University of Gottingen, the editor of the
Gottingen Magazine of Science and Literature got
from him some particulars of his early life, which it
would have been better if he had not furnished. " In
my fifteenth year," he wrote, " I enlisted in military
service, only remaining in the army, however, until I
reached my nineteenth year, when I resigned, and

24 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

went over to England."^ Herschel's friends did not
know how to gloss over this unhappy passage in his
life. What they said in England was as wide of the
reality as what he unfortunately said of himself —
"Unable, however, long to endure the drudgery of
such a situation, and conscious of superior proficiency
in his art, he determined on quitting the regiment,"
and arrived in England in the end of 1757. This is
not a barefaced statement of untruth, like the resigna-
tion of his position in the band.^ But the mother's
foolishness was singularly overruled for good.

Of William Herschel's wanderings after escaping from
the beaten army of Cumberland the pages that are torn
out of his sister's journal would probably have given
information, but it is not till two years have passed
that we again hear of him. He was then in England,
along with his eldest brother, Jacob. On Jacob's return
home in the end of 1759, William remained behind,
studying apparently the theory of music. Many of
his letters to Jacob on that subject were written in
English, a proof apparently that his mind was made
up not to seek his fortunes elsewhere. For five years
he again almost disappears from view, till he is seen
on a short visit to his Hanover home in the spring of
1764, to the joy of his family, especially of his father,
then an invalid, and of his young sister, Caroline.
In the interval his musical ability obtained for him in
his adopted country the post of bandmaster to a regi-
ment, stationed in one of the northern counties, said
to have been the Durham Militia. The Earl of
Darlington is said to have selected him "to super-

^ Quoted in Holden's Lift and Works of William Herschelt p. 4.
* Oentleman^s Magazine^ vol. xcii. (1822).

EARLY YEARS IN ENGLAND 25

intend and instruct a military band then forming by
that nobleman in the county of Durham. After this
engagement ended, he spent several years in Leeds,
Pontefract, Doncaster, etc." That he had been a
soldier, officers and men would soon discover from
his language and bearing. But he was, and seems to
have remained, a mystery for years. In 1764 he was
residing in Leeds, and went from that town on a
visit to his relations in Hanover. Towards the end
of 1765 he became organist of a church in Halifax,
where he applied himself to the study of Latin,
Italian, and mathematics. Music he continued to
cultivate as his profession in life during these years
of wilderness wandering.

Southey, in one of his stories from Doncaster,^ re-
presents Herschel, the astronomer, to have been, in
1760, "only a few months in England, and yet" able
to speak "English as well as a native." Miller, the
organist of Doncaster, who lived in a two-roomed
cottage, but had a collection of classical English works,
became acquainted with him through an officer of
the Durham Militia, found that his engagement with
that regiment was " only from month to month," and
urged him to leave them, and take up his abode in the
" but and a ben," which he did. Swift is alone men-
tioned as the English author Herschel preferred to
read, which, though it be consistent with the list of
favourite authors given by his sister, is not altogether
satisfactory evidence of the authenticity of Southey's
story. But, be that as it may. Miller was thus entitled
to be called his "earliest acquaintance" in England,
and certainly his best friend^ if it be true that he en-

* The Doctor, ii. 261, from Miller's Donmster (1804), p. 162.

26 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

couraged Herschel to apply for the organist's place in
Halifax. But Miss Herschel in 1822 speaks of " Mr.
Bulman from Leeds, the grandson of my brother's
earliest acquaintance in this country,"^ and tells us
that in 1764 he paid them in Hanover a fortnight's
visit from " Leeds in Yorkshire (where he must be left
for some time)." The organist's place at Halifax does
not date from 1760, but from 1765. The inconsist-
encies between Southey's story and Caroline Herschel's
are too serious to allow us to accept his version of the
means by which the organist's place at Halifax was
gained in or about 1760 as true of "Herschel the
astj'onomer." It is known that his brother Jacob was
in England for two years about 1759.

While resident in Halifax, Herschel appears to have
paid a visit to Italy, the ancient land of poetry and
astronomy. Our authority for this is Niemeyer, Chan-
cellor of the University of Halle, who visited Herschel
at Slough shortly before his death, and seems to have
received the details of the journey from his own lips.
When he reached Genoa on his way home, he found him-
self short of money to meet expenses. He had gone to
Italy to " improve himself in his profession of music " ;
and he put his improvement to use "by an original
kind of concert he gave in that town, in which he
played on the harp and on two horns fastened on his
shoulders at the same time." He procured the money
he needed, and, had he not been proud of his youth-
ful success as a musician, would not have told the
story, fifty years after, to his learned and distinguished
visitor, as either he or his sister Caroline must
have done. Her Memoirs contain no information on

* Memoirs, pp. 137, 826.

TEACHER AND ORGANIST AT BATH 27

this tour and concert. Her brother William seems to
have at that time fallen entirely out of her life, and
to have left her, without education, to become a house-
hold drudge and the slave of her brother Jacob. But
she cherished a spirit which, amid much that was
extremely depressing, scorned to be the one or the
other.

In the following year, 1766, William removed to
Bath, where he became a teacher of music and organist
of the Octagon Chapel. For five or six years after,
obscurity again settles on his life and adventures. All
that Caroline records is that Jacob joined his brother
at Bath, and showed the same flightiness of disposi-
tion which the family had previously seen in his
character. To speak of William as well known in the
society for which Bath was then famous, or among
the learned men and physicians by whom the town
was frequented, is to people the darkness with visions
of what we think should have been, but was not. He
was little known there or elsewhere, till he took the
world by storm ; but at that period events were taking
place in Bath which helped materially to lift the cur-
tain of darkness off his life in 1772. He was then
thirty-four years of age.

The musical director of Bath in those days was
Linley, whose daughter Elizabeth, "at the age of twelve
years, was brought forward publicly at the Rooms,
where she so charmed the company by her taste and
execution " as a singer, that she at once received the
name of the Siren. Two years later she got a more
attractive name, and was called the Angel. Her d^but
took place in the very year Herschel came to Bath.
Before she was seventeen she had turned the heads

28 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

of all the young men by her beauty and accomplish-
ments. Offer after offer was made for her hand, but
the preference was given by her father, for reasons not
creditable to him, to a suitor very much older than she
was, but immensely wealthy. With difficulty the girl
was persuaded to agree to the match. She withdrew
from all public engagements, and nothing was talked
of in Bath but the approaching wedding. While the
town was in this state of expectation, William Herschel,
seeing that great prizes were in prospect for attractive
singe™. betSught himself of his sister CaroUne. then
two or three years older than Miss Linley. He proposed
that she should join him at Bath, after receiving lessons
from their eldest brother, Jacob, in the hope that she
" might become a useful singer for his winter concerts
and oratorios." Should the experiment not succeed,
he promised to bring her back to Hanover at the end
of two yeara Evidently Jacob— he is described as
"brilliant" — had been a failure in Bath. A bully,
such as he was, could not help feeling that it was a
reflection on him to suggest she might succeed where
he had failed. Without ever hearing the girl sing,
he " turned the whole scheme into ridicule," but she
resented his conduct "by taking every opportunity
when all were from home to imitate, with a gag be-
tween my teeth, the solo parts of concertos, ahxike and
aU, such as I had heard them play on the violin ; in
consequence I had gained a tolerable execution before
I knew how to sing." The cruelty or stupidity of the
eldest brother had no effect on William, except to
deepen his determination to make this experiment.

Meanwhile, strange things were happening at Bath.
Miss Linley's admirer threw up his engagement, and,

CAROLINE'S ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND 29

as compensation, paid her father a thousand pounds
for the loss of her services at concerts. It was an
eminently discreditable business all round. But the
young lady did not want admireiB. especiaUy in a
family which migrated to Bath in 1771. Two of its
members were Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his
elder brother, Charles, both of them as poor as their
itinerant father, but as foolishly proud, though with
better reason. The girl preferred Richard, and in
that showed her good sense. But she was said to be
so thorough a flirt, that she was at the same time
giving Charles to understand he was the favoured
suitor.^ At last, knowing that her father's consent to
a marriage with Richard would be refused, she eloped
with him to France, and was placed by him in a con-
vent. Brought back by her father, she was married
to Sheridan on April 13, 1773. While this comedy
was proceeding at Bath, Herschel made a brief run
across to Hanover in April 1772, and returned for
his sister in August. He was able to settle a small
annuity on his mother in compensation for the loss
Caroline's removal would entail on the household.
She felt herself to be her mother's slave, to be bought
and sold. After a journey of ten days, they reached
London on the 26th of August, where, " when the shops
were lighted up, they went to see all that was to be
seen, of which she only remembered the opticians'
shops, for she did not think they looked at any other."

^ "Mrs. Sheridan is with us," Hannah More writes to her sister at
Bristol in 1778, **and her husband comes down on evenings. I find I
have mistaken this lady ; she is unafifected and sensible ; converses and
reads extremely well, and writes prettily." Mrs. Sheridan was nine or
ten years younger than Hannah More.

30 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

She came to England to be a public singer, she begins
her work by a few lessons on optical instruments in
the shop windows of London. Herschel had by that
time evidently entered on the race for fame. His
sister was twenty-two years of age.

Fourteen years after, when she had become a cele-
brity in all the observatories of Europe, at the Royal
Society, and in the palace at Windsor, she is thus
described by a young woman, who was then as
famous for her pen as Caroline became for her comet-
finder. " She is very little," the authoress of Evdina
writes, " very gentle, very modest, and very ingenuous ;
and her manners are those of a person unhackneyed
and unawed by the world, yet desirous to meet and
to return its smiles. I love not the philosophy that
braves it. This brother and sister seem gratified with
its favour, at the same time that their own pursuit is
all-sufficient to them without it." " I inquired of Miss
Herschel if she was still comet-hunting, or content now
with the moon? The brother answered that he had
the charge of the moon, but he left to his sister to
sweep the heavens for comets."^ Was this famous
little lady above thinking of the small things which
delight the fancy of less remarkable women ? In her
case, would the answer to the prophet's question. Can
a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire ?
have been Fes! Far from it. When she made her
first public appearance as a singer " her brother pre-
sented her with ten guineas for her dress," and she
tells us herself that her " choice could not have been a
bad one," as the proprietor of the Bath theatre pro-
nounced her " to be an ornament to the stage ! " All

^ (Fanny Barney) Madame D'Arblay, LetUrSf etc., uL 442.

r

RACE FOR RICHES OR FOR FAME? 31

the same, intercourse with fashionable young ladies in
London did not give her a high opinion of them or
their attainments, " she thought them very little better
than idiots/'

About three years after his daughter's marriage,
Linley withdrew from Bath. His place was supplied
by William Herschel, who, to quote Niemeyer's words,
'' led the band at the theatre, conducted oratorios, and
instructed some able pupils in that city." At that time
" the Bath orchestra and its pump-room performances
were the theme of general commendation in England,"
and to maintain the same standard of excellence, especi-
ally after the Misses Linley's retirement, entailed heavy
and unremitting labour on the new director. Whether
Herschel entertained the idea or not that he might
succeed with his sister Caroline as Linley had succeeded
with his two daughters may be open to doubt, but it is
unquestionable that he had it in his power to make the
trial, and that he did bring her out as a public singer.
The gains of success were large and tempting. Miss
Linley, now Mrs. Sheridan, was oflfered a seven years'
engagement in London at a thousand a year for twelve
nights' singing, and as much more for a benefit. Success
held out such dazzling prospects, that the certainty of
failure could alone have prevented Herschel from per-
severing in his attempt to train his sister as a pro-
fessional singer. And he did not persevere. The lot of
Caroline Herschel was not destined to be that of a public
singer ; it was to be the lot of a woman of science at a
time when few of her sex could aspire to that honour-
able rank. Had William Herschel succeeded in turning
out his sister as a public singer, or in placing her on
the throne vacated by Miss Linley, would his race for

32 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

bread not have become a race for riches instead of a
race for fame? She herself had hopes of becoming
a prima donna in the music world. Her friends
cherished the same hope. But neither for her nor for
her brother William did the race for fame lead along
that road. For her brother Jacob, her detestation, it
might possibly have so led. Dr. Bumey, the author of
a Oeneral History of Music and other works, was also
of that opinion. William Herschel to him was the
" greatest astronomer " of the age, while of Jacob he
writes : " Herschel, master of the King's band at Han-
over, and brother of the great astronomer, is an excel-
lent instrumental composer in a more serious and
simple style than the present."^ Other women are
mentioned by Dr. Bumey among the singers of fame
in those days, but Miss Herschel gets no such honour-
able mention in the annals of music.

For some years following her arrival in England
the lives of the two Herschels are so intermingled
that the history of Caroline is to a large extent the
history of William also. They were both running
the same course, and the one was holding out a
helping hand to the other in the same race, the race
for bread and the race for fame. Flighty, uncer-
tain, bullying Jacob sunk out of their life in October
1787; but another brother, more to Caroline's mind,
had entered it, and continued to diffuse a pleasant
savour in the household at Bath, Alexander,^ about
five years older than his sister. He was of great
assistance both as a violinist and a mechanician.
Alexander was not of the same cheery, hopeful nature
as William. On the contrary, he went amongst

* Histwy, ir. 603. ' Born November 13, 1746.

CAROLINE'S HOUSEKEEPING 33

them by the name of Dick Doleful, and when he
fell into the dismals, as he seems frequently to have
done, William and Caroline had the pleasure of
laughing him out of them into good humour. The
house ^ was managed by the family of Mr. Bulman,
William HerscheVs "earliest acquaintance in this
country," with whom he lodged in Leeds, and for
whom he procured the situation of clerk to the
Octagon Chapel. They occupied the parlour floor.
"Alexander, who had been some time in England,
boarded and lodged with his elder brother, and with
myself," Caroline says, " occupied the attic. The first
floor, which was furnished in the newest and most hand-
some style, my brother kept for himself. The front
room, containing the harpsichord, was always in order
to receive his musical friends and scholars at little
private concerts or rehears9;ls." A household so con-
stituted, with a manager in charge " who had failed in
business " in Leeds, and a strong-minded young woman
who had known the thrift and drudgery of a poor
German home in Hanover, had not in it the elements
of stability. In six weeks, apparently, Caroline had
to take the reins of household management into her
own hands. No details are given; but, while still
unable to speak English with comfort to herself, she
was put in charge of the house accounts, and attended
to the marketing, with her brother Alexander on guard
behind to see that she found her way to market and
home again in safety. The first time she ventured
into a clamorous crowd of sellers, she brought back
whatever in her fright she could pick up. But her
battles with servants and her horror of waste were

^ No. 7 New King Street.

34 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

greater trials to temper than buying from market-
people. These were troubles which worried her through
life, though a reader may smile at the recital of Cin-
derella's sufferings. Of the poverty in her childhood's
Hanover home, she wrote when she was seventy-seven
years of age, and had gone " back again to the place
where," she says, " I first drew breath, and where the
first twenty-two years of my life (from my eighth year
on) had been sacrificed to the service of my family under
the utmost self-privation without the least prospect or
hope of future reward." Even then her trouble with
servants never left her : " I may perhaps be spared a
long confinement before I leave this world, else such
a thing as a trusty servant is, I believe, hardly to be
met with in this city of Hanover, which, along with
the people in it, are so altered since the French occu-
pation and the return of the military with their
extravagant and dissipated notions, imbibed when in
Spain and England, with their great pensions, which
they draw from the latter country, that it is quite a
new world, peopled with new beings, to what I left it
in 1772."

This young housekeeper and singer found herself in
a world of astronomical talk, for which she had no
liking, when she left her humble home in Hanover with
her brother William. For six days and nights they
travelled in the open and inconvenient postwagen of
those times to the seacoast at Hellevoetsluis, where
they were to take ship for England. So clear were
the nights that William pointed out to his sister the
stars and constellations of the northern sky. Arrived
at Bath, she was launched on the study of music and
the practice of singing, but during the long nights of

THE RACE FOR FAME 35

winter William, evidently to divert her mind from the
depressing home-sickness which weighed it down, gave
her lessons in astronomy, or amused her with dreams
that in a few years became waking realities. He was
running a hard race for daily bread, for the thirty-five
or thirty-eight lessons a week which he gave to music
pupils might be counted work enough for an ordinary
man, without reference to his duties as organist and
manager of concerts. But he had also entered the
arena of science in the race for lasting fame. A
holiday from teaching meant for him increased work
in the astronomical studies which were now absorbing
his time and thoughts. " It soon appeared/' his sister
writes, " that he was not contented with knowing what
former observers had seen, for he began to contrive a
telescope eighteen or twenty feet long (I believe after
Huyghens' description)." Her help was continually
wanted in executing the various contrivances required.
Although the lenses were ordered from London, she
had to make the pasteboard tube they were fitted into,
and when the telescope was turned on Jupiter or
Saturn, she had to keep the paper tube straight till
her brother got a peep through it. We need not be
surprised to read her complaint that her music lessons
were much hindered by astronomy, housekeeping, and
indifierent servants. She was realising an old truth.
Her brother and she imagined that service to two or
three or even to four masters was possible. They
were finding out that they could really serve only one.
And slowly but surely William Herschel and his sister
weilB drifting into the service of the one master, not
the fleeting fame of a singer but the lasting fame of
a discoverer. But those days of singing were never

36 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

forgotten. In the last year of her life, when visited by
the Crown Prince of Hanover, his wife and child, she
sang to them a composition of her brother William's,
" Suppose we sing a Catch." The gulf between 1780
and 1847 was at once beautifully bridged by the little
old lady of ninety-seven !

DoUond had shown in the Philosophical Transactions
for 1758 how the colours, that rendered a refracting
telescope useless as a means of discovery, might be
obviated. He pointed out to his countrymen how flint
glass and crown glass corrected each other's defect, and
might be used, as they had never been used before, to
search into the depths of heaven. It was a marvellous
discovery; but thought in those days was perhaps
slower of action than it is now, for a seed of truth,
laden with immense possibilities, lay dying in the
ground for sixty years, till Fraunhofer of Munich
applied it to construct the great refractor of Dorpat.
But it was reflecting telescopes of the Newtonian and
Gregorian pattern, not refractors such as Dollond's, to
which the enthusiast of Bath finally turned his atten-
tion. What Gregory and Newton had proposed or
executed on a small scale, Herschel proceeded to build
with his own hands on a vastly larger, after finding
that the cost of even a small telescope would be above
the price he " considered it proper to give." It was not
a case, as might be supposed, of the narrow insularity
of our countrymen thus to neglect a great discovery
by following out a more cumbersome English method.
Gregory, Newton, DoUond all belonged to this country.
It was also the adopted home of Herschel, but he pre-
ferred the toilsome telescopes of the two former to the
simpler and now possible instrument of the latter.

MIRRORS FOR TELESCOPES MADE 37

" At Bath in my leisure hours," he says, " by way of
amusement, I made for myself several 2-feet, 5-feet,
7-feet, 10-feet, and 20-feet Newtonian telescopes;
besides others of the Gregorian form of 8 inches,
12 inches, 18 inches, 2 feet, 3 feet, 5 feet, and 10 feet
focal length. My way was ... to have many mirrors
of each sort cast ; and to finish them all as well as I
could ; then to select by trial the best of them, which
I preserved ; the rest were put by to be repolished. In
this manner I made not less than 200, 7-feet; 150,
10-feet ; and about 80, 20-feet mirrors, not to mention
those of the Gregorian form, or of the construction of
Dr. Smith's reflecting microscope, of which I also made
a great number. . . . The number of stands I invented
for these telescopes it would not be easy to assign." ^
The story he tells of this magnificent " amusement," if
less racy than his sister's, is far more wonderful. Could
these mirrors have been sold at the prices then ruling
the market, a large fortune would have rewarded the
maker, as it ultimately did.

In June 1773 the new departure of Herschel com-
menced. Some of his pupils had left Bath ; concerts,
oratorios, and the theatre were at an end for five or
six months. " To my sorrow," his sister writes, " I saw
almost every room turned into a workshop." A
cabinetmaker was making a tube and stands of all
kinds in the drawing-room; her brother Alexander
was "turning patterns, grinding glasses, and turning
eye-pieces " in a bedroom ; and while this manufactory
was in its busiest whirl, William Herschel was besides
composing glees, catches, anthems for winter consump-
tion in the public rooms and the chapel, or holding

^ PlUl, Transit 1796, pp. 347-^8.

38 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

rehearsals frequently at home. Alexander had to leave
his turning-lathe for these rehearsals, and the seldom
enthusiastic sister writes of him, "his solos on the
violoncello were divine." It was work without inter-
mission. Even at meal-times William was generally
employed "contriving or making drawings of what-
ever came in his mind." Tea and supper were served
without interrupting the work he had on hand. While
he was at the turning-lathe or polishing mirrors for
telescopes, Caroline read to him Don Quixote, the
Arabian Nights, a novel of Sterne or Fielding. In
course of time she became as useful a member of the
household as a boy might be to his master in the first
year of his apprenticeship. Still more " to drill me for
a gentlewoman (God knows how she succeeded) two
lessons per week for a whole twelvemonth from Miss
Fleming, the celebrated dancing-mistress," were deemed
indispensable. The drollery of the thing ! " As I was
to take part the next year in the oratorios ! " nothing
is wanting to complete the fun but " two lessons per
week " at so much a lesson ! The old lady who wrote
this story of work and drollery — both of them perhaps
detested by her when she was still a fraulein fresh
from her poor Hanover home — may have laid the
colours a little too thickly on the picture of work,
earnest, all-absorbing work, and absurd fun, which she
left to posterity. We may well be gratified she has,
for if she escaped from the sneers of bullying Jacob,
she certainly fell into the hands of exacting William.
The difference was that she detested the former, wor-
shipped the latter, and made a great name for herself
as well as helped to make a greater for him.

She entertained the idea that her power as a singer

DROUGHT BY DAY: FROST BY NIGHT 39

would have assured her a respectable, if not a hand-
some income, had her voice been cultivated, as it was
not. Others of the family, reading her Memoirs,
appear to have shared her sentiments. It is very
doubtful. Her brother William — "best and dearest
of brothers " — must have thought otherwise, when he
allowed her music lessons to be hindered by marketing,
incompetent servants, and other trifles.

The story told by Herschel himself of his struggles
in Bath and afterwards, if less racy, is certainly
more wonderful. Encouragement he seems to have
had from no one, not even from Caroline, who sub-
mitted, not without grumbling, to his whims or
caprice.

He was pursuing his studies with a devotion which,
to one who reads the papers he afterwards wrote, calls
to mind the devotion of the patriarch in pursuit of his
mistress's love. "In the day the drought consumed
me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed
from mine eyes." Most literally true was this as a
picture of the astronomer's labours at Bath. "The
tube of my seven-feet telescope is covered with ice " is
his journal entry one autumn night. A month later he
writes, " It freezes very hard, and the stars are very
tremulous." Two months later, in midwinter, we read,
" Not only my breath freezes upon the side of the tube,
but more than once have I found my feet fastened to
the ground, when I have looked long at the same star."
On removing to Windsor, there was no falling away in
his devotion to this imperious mistress. " At four o'clock
in the morning," he writes on New Year's Day 1783,
" my ink was frozen in the room ; and, about five o'clock,
a twenty-feet speculum, in the tube, went off with a

40 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

crack, and broke into two pieces. On looking at
Fahrenheit's thermometer, I found it to stand at 11*"."
And, in the height of summer that year, " the telescope
ran with water all the night," that is, " the condensing
moisture on the tube has been running down in
streams." "The small speculum, which sometimes
gathers moisture, was never affected in the 7-feet tube,
but was a little so in the 20-feet. The large eye-
glasses and object-glasses of the finders required
wiping very often." Such were some of the discom-
forts cheerfully undergone by this votary of science in
pursuit of truth.^

Amid labours so continuous and so heavy it cannot
occasion surprise that Caroline sometimes found relief
in a fit of grumbling. When her brother was polishing
a mirror, " by way of keeping him alive, she was con-
stantly obliged to feed him by putting the victuals by
bits into his mouth. This was once the case when, in
order to finish a seven-foot mirror, he had not taken his
hands from it for sixteen hours together." ^ The
delicate lad, who, by his mother's address, escaped
soldiering in 1757, had grown into a powerful athlete
in 1772. This sometimes happens. Four years later
he tried to improve on Newton's telescope by almost
doubling the light let fall on the mirror at the bottom
of the tube. He then experimented with a ten-feet
reflector, but failed. He repeated the attempt with a
twenty-feet in 1784, but again was disappointed : " it
was too hastily laid aside." He succeeded shortly after,
and found " it to be a very convenient and pleasant as
well as useful way of observing " : it inverts the north

^ Phil. Tram., 1803, pp. 216-19.

^ Lalande told the some story in 1783. See Arago.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 41

and south, but not the preceding and following." ^ He
called it the Front-view, meaning that he tilted the
mirror a little at the bottom, and, dispensing with
Newton's plane mirror at the object end, secured all
the light he could.

At that epoch in the world's history there was a
singular upheaval of human thought and effort. In
the years between 1760 and 1785 the world may be
said to have witnessed more surprising changes than any
it experienced since the revival of letters and the dis-
covery of America. James Cook, aided by Joseph Banks
and other men like himself, discovered new lands or
new worlds of great extent and beauty in the bosom
of the ocean ; William Herschel, as the famous astro-
nomer Lalande expressed it, " displayed a new heaven
to earth," and discovered seventy-five millions of sunny
stars. James Watt had solved the problem of convert-
ing the unruly giant of Steam into an obedient slave of
man — the beginning of endless improvements in the
bettering of man's lot. Gibbon had begun his Decline
and FaU, Robertson was writing his Histories, and
Hume was stirring the whole world of thought by the
boldness and novelty of his ideas. Even in the political
sphere that period was a seedtime fruitful of changes.
The new world had changed hands. The Anglo-Saxon
race and language had triumphed ; the future of North
America at least was assured. So was the future of
India to the same hardy stock. Voltaire and his
fellow-workers were paving the way for the violent
upheaval that soon came in Europe. Everywhere men
were sowing the seeds of a harvest of progress and
blessing, mixed and disfigured with many a root of

^ PhU, Trans, for 1786, p. 499.

42 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

bitterness. But among the purest and freest from vice
of all the harvests reaped from the seedbed then tilled
and sown, was that of William Herschel in his laborious
study of the stars. It left no bitter weed behind it to
poison or deface the riches of its harvest.

Herschel was prospering in worldly circumstances
amid this stress of effort and thought. He had learned
also what a great poet expressed in words some years
after: "The excellence of every art is its intensity,
capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from
their being in relation with beauty and truth." ^ His
intensity required more room for its exercise. He was
realising, he was putting into practical form Laplace's
idea of a philosopher as one " who, uniting to a fertile
imagination a rigid severity in investigation and
observation, is at once tormented by the desire of
ascertaining the cause of the phenomena, and by the
fear of deceiving himself in that which he assigns." ^
Accordingly, he first " moved to a larger house, which
had a garden behind it, and open space down to the
river." It should be a place of pilgrimage to astro-
nomers, for there discoveries were made, and also what
were thought to be famous discoveries, but were not,
and there the mirror for a great telescope was fin-
ished. Alone, without encouragement from the outside
world of science, plunged in the depths of triflers'
gay idleness, and sometimes subjected to the sharp
tongue of his sister Caroline, this unwearied worker
toiled on to his goal. He was determined to see what
others had not seen, to know what others 'had not dis-
covered. And he succeeded in reaching that goal.

1 Eeats, Life, i. 92.

' SyfAvm t^lhe World, ii. 810.

HERSCHEL'S REVEALING AT HAND 43

When his sister expected him to cheer her lonely life
by lesson or talk, he was so absorbed in work that he
withdrew to his bedroom to study some favourite
author, and fell asleep in the midst of his books. One
of the favourite works she mentions was the Aatrorumiy
of James Ferguson, published in 1756, the work of a
self-taught Scottish peasant, whose proudest boast, had
he lived to see the result, would have been that he did
as much as any man, perhaps more, to start William
Herschel on the path which led to results undreamed
of in the history of science. And the book that
Herschel thus fell asleep over was published anew by
a famous man of science after Herschel's death, and
was enriched with the multitudinous observations of the
great astronomer. Master and pupil were embalmed
together in that edition of the Astronomy, which can
still bear comparison with any books of the kind that
have been published, without coming out second best.

But the time of revealing William Herschel to the
world as a practical astronomer of the first rank was
now at hand. That he was little known in Bath and
its neighbourhood we might gather from the silence
observed regarding him by Hannah More, whose sisters
kept a girls* school in Bristol, where she also resided.
She was a lover of astronomy, and in 1762 made the
"acquaintance of Ferguson, the popular astronomer,
then engaged at Bristol in giving public lectures — an
acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship."^
But the girl who, as a woman of thirty-four, knew and
recorded her impressions of Miss Linley, finds no place
in either her Bristol or her London gossip for the far
greater name of William Herschel, who conducted

^ Life, etc., i. 16.

44 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

oratorios even at Bristol, was a favourite at Court,

and was famous throughout Europe. Truly it may be

said to Herschel what the passing traveller said to

Archytas,

"Nee quidquam tibi prodest
Aerias tentasse domos animoque rotundum
Percurrisae polum morituro."

Still, there can be no doubt that his discoveries became
the talk of London and the world. Perhaps, also,
many a British patriot, in indignant condemnation
of the folly and tyranny which alienated the United
States of America from the parent stock, was echoing
the words of Horace Walpole, "Mr. Herschel will
content me if he can discover thirteen provinces,"
among his twenty millions of worlds, " well inhabited
by men and women, and protected by the law of
nations, and can annex them to the crown of Great
Britain, in lieu of those it has lost beyond the
Atlantic." ^

^ Letters, vi. 258. On Herschel's life in England, and especially in
Batb, see Appendix.

CHAPTER IV

THE DISCOVERY OF HERSCHEL

Herschel had been studying the stars with improved
telescopes for upwards of four years before any of the
literary and high-placed people, who flocked every
winter to Bath, knew that a man of genius lived
among them and was a servant to their gaiety or
devotion. Beau Nash had been a better known figure
in their streets, a more respected man among a com-
munity of fops, idlers, and intriguers, and was deemed
more worthy of a statue in their pump-room or their
public park.^ The man among them, who was destined
to write his name on the heavens and to live when
triflers and fops were all forgotten, attended their
church meetings as an organist, their concerts as a
conductor, and their drawing-rooms as a teacher of
music to them or their children. They had not dis-
covered that, by the irony of fate, a genius, head and
shoulders above them all, was toiling for bread one
half of the year, and slaving for fame or the welfare
of mankind for the other half. He was really running
two races before their eyes at the same time, the

^ '* At the east end of the saloon, a posthumous marble statue of the
great Nash, executed by Prince Hoare, at the expense of the corpora-
tion, is handsomely ensconced" (Granville (in 1889), Spcu o/JEnghmd,

ii. 394).

45

46 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

indispensable race for bread along one course, which
they all saw and had little or no sympathy with,
and the unquenchable race for fame along another
totally unlike, to which they were altogether in-
different. To run both races at the same time required
a spirit of indomitable energy and perseverance.

In the world of literature and science it is not
unfrequently the hard fate of genius to be passed by
in the crowd, till some onlooker discovers it, as a
diamond may be discovered among a heap of common
stones on the roadside. The fire of genuine inspira-
tion may have warmed the heart or lighted up the
eye ; but, until the onlooker, long waited for, it may
be, goes past, no difference will be seen between a
genius and other men by the ordinary crowd of
humanity.

Ministers of state, heads of political parties, busy-
bodies filled with national affairs were seen, recognised,
or pointed out in carriages or places of public resort
by those who enjoyed or were compelled by doctors'
orders to endure the weariness of the place.^ But
" there are forty thousand others that I neither know
nor intend to know," Walpole wrote : " in short, it is
living in a fair, and I am heartily sick of it already."
In the very year in which these words were written,
Herschel was settled at Bath. He was one of the
forty thousand nobodies, but Walpole was compelled
in good time to reckon him a power in the world ;
he was only a poor player in the world s fair at
Bath.

Court ladies and people of distinction knew William
Herschel at Bath. They patronised him and his sister,

^ See Walpole's LetUrsfrom Bath, v. 160, Oct. 2, 1766.

DR. WATSON'S DISCOVERY OF HERSCHEL 47

got him pupils, and did what they could for him in the
race for bread. But they had no idea that he was at
the same time running a race for fame, or, to speak
more correctly, was preparing to step into that arena.
They would have smiled an incredulous smile had
anyone said so to them. A music master and a
director of concerts they could understand and ap-
preciate as an inferior creature ; but a man who
pottered about reflectors and refractors, and looked at
the moon from a back garden or a street, when the rest
of the world had gone to bed, was beyond their com-
prehension, or probably came in for their pity. And
yet it was on a street, and late at night, that the genius
of Herschel was discovered by an inhabitant of Bath,
a perfect stranger to him and his scientific pursuits.
So curious is the romance of the discovery that it is
best told in Herschel's own words.

"About the latter end of this month [December
1779] I happened to be engaged in a series of obser-
vations on the lunar mountains, and the moon being
in front of my house, late in the evening I brought my
seven-feet reflector into the street, and directed it to
the object of my observations. Whilst I was looking
into the telescope, a gentleman coming by the place
where I was stationed, stopped to look at the instru-
ment. When I took my eye off the telescope, he very
politely asked if he might be permitted to look in,
and this being immediately conceded, he expressed
great satisfaction at the view. Next morning the
gentleman, who proved to be Dr. Watson, jun. (now
Sir William), called at my house to thank me for my
civility in showing him the moon, and told me that
there was a Literary Society then forming at Bath,

4? HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

and invited me to become a member of it, to which I
readily consented." The house in front of which this
discovery of an astronomer was made, was in River
Street,^ and the discoverer of Herschel was Dr. Watson,
a distinguished Fellow of the Royal Society of Lon-
don,2 and a man of whom Herschel afterwards spoke
in his printed papers with the highest respect and
gratitude.

A look through a telescope in a street-observatory
was not uncommon then even for a rising philosopher.
As Humphry Davy " was passing through the streets
one fine night, he observed a man showing the moon
through a telescope. He stopped to look at the earth's
satellite, and tendered a penny to the exhibitor. But
the latter, on learning that his customer was no less
a person than the great Davy, exclaimed with an
important air, that * he could not think of taking
money from a brother-philosopher.' "

Dr. Watson and his father, Sir William Watson,
were well-known members of the Royal Society.
To the father in 1745 was awarded the Copley
Medal for "surprising discoveries in electricity,
exhibited in his late experiments." His portrait also
is one of those in the Royal Society's keeping. The
son became a Fellow in 1770. Like his father, he
had a leaning towards the study of electricity. In
1756, when the Society honoured itself by electing
Benjamin Franklin, "although not an inhabitant of
this island," a Fellow, the certificate recommending
that this be done was signed by the President and

^ He soon afterwards remoyed to 19 New King Street.
' Dr. Watson seems to have done a similar kindness to others. See
Annual Begister for 1788 [68-60].

BLUNTS AND POINTS 49

seven others, of whom W. Watson, the father, was
one. In 1762, Dr. Watson in a letter to the First Lord
of the Admiralty ^ recommended that the navy should
be supplied with lightning-conductors of a pattern
he devised. The ships were furnished with them,
but they were not a success, and sixty years elapsed
before conductors of a suitable construction were
fastened to the masts. Long before then the danger
of powder magazines on land from lightning had
been recognised and provided for, but not without
something like civil war among the Fellows of the
Royal Society. A committee, of which Franklin and
Dr. Watson were members, reported strongly in favour
of pointed conductors for the powder magazines at
Purfleet. One member not only dissented, but formed
a party, who wrote and acted in favour of blunt and
against pointed conductors. Again a committee was
appointed, of which Dr. Watson was a member, to
put the matter to the test of experiment. Their
conclusion was the same as before. Unfortunately,
this was in 1777, at the height of the war with the
American colonies. Party politics were at once
dragged in to decide a purely scientific question.
Franklin was in favour of the lightning-rods ending
in points. Philadelphia also had been provided with
them, and "not a single instance" of mischief from
the severe thunderstorms experienced in that city
had happened. That was enough with foolish people
to condemn points and favour blunts. The Royal
Society decided for points; all who voted on that
side were counted friends of the American rebels, as
the phrase then went. King George iii. took the side

1 Lord Anson {Phil, Tram,, Dec. 16, 1762).
4

so HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

of the hlvmts. When Franklin was informed of
the King's action, he wrote from France: "The
King's changing his pointed conductors for blunt
ones is a matter of small importance to me. • . . For
it is only since he thought himself and family safe
from the thunder of Heaven that he dared to use
his own thunder in destroying his own subjects."
But George ill. went further. He even endeavoured
to make the Royal Society rescind their decision in
favour of points. Sir John Pringle, the President, —
a man who had been Professor of Moral Philosophy
in Edinburgh, who was physician-extraordinary to
the King and Queen, vir illustris de omnibus bonis
artibus bene Toeritus, — when urged to use his influence
against points and for blunts, manfully replied, " Sire,
I cannot reverse the laws and operations of nature."
A late ^ addition to the story is that the King replied,
"Perhaps, Sir John, you had better resign." That
he did resign and withdraw to Edinburgh a year
afterward, is certain: whether points and blunts
had any influence in causing him to take that step is
uncertain, but it can scarcely be doubted that the
King's interference in a scientific quarrel had some-
thing to do with the censure passed on his generosity
by Dr. Watson, the son, four years afterwarda*

1 In 1820.

' Sir John, after his return from Edinburgh to London in 1781, had
the pleasure of spending a couple of hours on week-nights at a society
of which he had been for many years a member, and where he met
**with such friends as Mr. Cavendish, Dr. Heberden, and Dr. Watson."
It was at one of these meetings that Sir John, on the 14th of January
1782, was seized with a fit from which he never recovered. In August
of that year, with his friend's death still fresh in his thoughts, Dr.
Watson gave expression to his sentiments regarding the King's
shabbiness {Annviu Register, 1783 [45]).

FIRST PAPERS FOR ROYAL SOCIETY 51

Possibly, Dr. Watson shared the opinion of Franklin's
friend, who wrote the epigram —

"While you, great George, for knowledge hunt,
And sharp conductors change for blunt,

The nation's out of joint :
Franklin a wiser course pursues,
And all your thunder useless views

By keeping to the point." ^

Dr. Watson's discovery soon bore fruit. Herschel
had been carefully studying the planet Saturn since
the spring of 1774. He had also been observing
the mountains on the moon's face and making calcu-
lations of their height. Besides, he had been watching
a variable star in the neck of the constellation called
The Whale. Four months after his introduction to
Dr. Watson, he communicated to the Royal Society
through him two papers, which were read on May 11,
1780, and modestly described as by Mr. William
Herschel of Bath. The first of the two was " On the
Periodical Star in Collo CetiJ' The paper in itself was
not of much consequence, and it was on an old and
well-worn subject;^ but it showed the books which
had influenced him in his astronomical studies, as his
sister had found by experience, and the carefulness
with which he had for years been making observa-
tions on the stars. He had no desire to be considered
an amateur. He was in thorough earnest, keeping a
journal of what he saw in the skies, and carefully
noting every change for future reference. On this
Stella Mira, or Wonderful Star, as it was called from
the " surprising appearances " it was known to present,

1 Weld, Hist, of the RoyaZ Society, ii. 7, 94-101, 392.
s See Lalande, i. 814 (edition 1771).

52 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

and the changes it was found to undergo in 333 or
334 days, he made at least fourteen separate obser-
vations and measurements between October 20, 1777,
and February 7, 1780. He was only feeling his way
as a recorder of what he saw in the heavens. It
was but a beginning, and he was forty-two years of
age.

To do justice to this eager lover of nature, the
object which he had in view when he began to make
telescopes for himself, should not be forgotten. He
wanted to see with his own eyes what others had
seen in the heavens, he hoped to see more than they
had seen, and at last he determined to build an
instrument of such power as should penetrate the
depths of space far beyond the boundaries man had
at that time attained. His purpose was to see the
heavens as the telescope had revealed them to the
eyes of ' others ; it was not to be an assistant in an
observatory such as Greenwich, content to discharge
the routine work of each day, or perhaps of each
night A telescope, a most powerful telescope, was
the purpose deeply rooted in his mind ; it was
not to improve the instruments then in use, nor to
systematise the work done in observatories. Perhaps
he had a large share in doing both. He read the
scientific world a lesson on the necessity of all-night as
well as all-day work, which they stood much in need
of learning. Great and valuable as was the work
done at Greenwich then and previously, it was done at
small expense to the nation. An astronomer-royal
at £300 a year, an assistant at £70, and a kitchen-
garden was the kailyard policy pursued by our
country up to 1811. Remonstrances were presented

LIMITS OF ERROR 53

to the Government of the day. The salary was then
doubled, " thirty chaldrons of coals and one hundred
pounds of wax candles" were asked for, and the
enclosing of the kitchen - garden ! Evidently the
official mind had not grasped the idea that the
astronomer - royal was no longer a fortune-telling
interpreter of the heavens, as Kepler had been forced
to become for bread! With one assistant all-night
work was barely possible ! ^ The instruments in use
may be judged of from " An Account of the Equatorial
Instrument," or " mural quadrant," given to the Royal
Society in 1793, twenty years after Herschel began
his labours. The precision of observation among
the ancients could not be trusted to within from five
to ten minutes. Tycho Brahe reduced the probable
limit of error to within one minute. Hevelius in the
following century brought it down to fiften or twenty
seconds, and in the century after it was reduced to seven
or eight seconds.^ To entitle observations to any
credit it was then felt that a probable error of more
than a few seconds could not be admitted — or perhaps
only a hundredth part of the errors unavoidable in
the days of Hipparchus. In 1827, Sir John Herschel
was able to say that he had " secured such a degree of
precision that the stars cross the wire often on the
very beat of the chronometer when they are expected."
Clocks, transit-instruments, mural-circles may be said
to have been in their infancy when Herschel began
his work. He did not propose to work or measure
with these as men do in an observatory. He was
eager to see with a telescope; but he soon found
that, if he was to do any good, he would require to

1 Weld, ii. 250. « Ph4Z. Trans, for 1798.

54 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

observe and measure as well. He was one of a race of
working astronomers of whom England had cause to
be proud. They might be called, but they were not
amateurs.

The second paper, read the same day, and headed
" Astronomical Observations relating to the Mountains
of the Moon," was more ambitious, and formed a better
prelude to the path of discovery, on which Herschel
would soon enter. He begins with an apology for
attempting to ascertain the height of the lunar moun-
tains, but a "knowledge of the construction of the
moon leads us insensibly to several consequences,
which might not appear at first; such as the great
probability, not to say almost absolute certainty, of
her being inhabited." He is equally certain that
the moon rejoices in an atmosphere like the earth's.^
Passing over this scientific faith, in the meantime,
as a heritage he received from the past but had not
examined, we find him boldly venturing to dispute
the conclusions arrived at by Galileo, Hevelius, and
others of great name. Galileo had made the lunar
mountains higher than any then known on the earth,
five and a half miles; but Hevelius reduced this

^ In 1762, Samuel Dunn, from *'a nice examination of the two ends
of Saturn's ring, at such time when the planet is on the dark edge
of the moon,'* came to the conclusion "that this diversity of appear-
ance must have arisen from the effects of an atmosphere of the moon."
Previously, he states, the existence of an atmosphere was much de-
bated, and is "still undecided " (Fhil. Trans, for 1761-2, vol. lii. p. 680).

In a paper read before the Royal Society on November 27, 1766,
the Prince de Croy expresses doubts about the existence of a lunar
atmosphere, but "I am inclined to believe," he says, "there is no
water in the moon." He also states that the hollows between the
mountains marked on his diagram are surprising on account of their
depth.

THE MOON'S FACE 55

estimate to about three miles and a quarter. Herschel
attacked the problem, armed with a telescope of six
feet eight inches focal length, which he speaks of as
" a very excellent instrument, equal to any that was
ever made." He brought to it also the same " uncom-
mon diligence and attention," which made up in some
measure for the imperfect instruments of previous
astronomers; and he had confidence in himself, in
his eyesight, and in the goodness of the work he had
done.

He was struck by the "deep shadows" cast by
mountains on the moon's surface. Probably these
shadows were then a puzzle to him. But he made
one sagacious observation, which subsequent observers
have developed into a view of the moon's face alto-
gether different from what he started with. On Mona
Lacer he writes : " I am almost certain there are two
very considerable cavities or places where the ground
descends below the level of the convexity, just before
these mountains." The moon's face is now known to
be pitted with hollows of great extent and depth.
Herschel's predecessors called them seas and oceans,
of which there are none on the moon. The hills and
mountains that rise from these vast cavities do not at
the utmost greatly exceed the estimate come to by
Herschel, a mile and a half, or a mile and three-
quarters in height. But if the height be reckoned
above the hollow from which they rise, it may be
nearer three times as much. We count the heights of
mountains on the earth from the level of the sea. If
we reckoned from the bottom of the ocean, our moun-
tains will be found considerably to exceed in height
those of the moon. It is now known that these

56 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

cavities in the moon are from ten to seventeen
thousand feet in depth, that they are surrounded by
a great rampart or wall, a hundred, two hundred, or
two hundred and fifty miles round, and that the
mountains which rise from the floor of the cavity
may be about a mile or a mile and a half high.^

His study of the moon's face led him, two years after,
to believe that, from his far-off station near Windsor,
to which he had then removed from Bath, he was
looking down one night into the depths of the boiling
crater of a volcano in the moon. A discovery so
singular was not a thing to publish till he had full
assurance of its accuracy. Four years after, he be-
lieved he had obtained evidence sufficient to warrant
publication. Others, well qualified to judge, were of
the same opinion. Among them was a gentleman
from the Gottingen Society, to which Herschel the
year before had taken the King's present of a 10-feet
reflector. Writing to a friend in Paris, that gentle-
man says : —

"May BO.

" Sir, — Mr. Herschel has lately made a discovery of
the greatest consequence, of which I have had the good
fortune to be an eye-witness. He had observed last
month, one or two days after the new moon, in the
dark part of it, three luminous points. Two of these

^ Moretus is a circular depression 120 kilometres across (80 miles),
with an isolated mountain in the centre of nearly 7000 feet in height,
the most considerable of its kind on the moon {Atlas Photographique
de la LuTie, Paris 1898, c. 56). The depths of the cavities are frequently
very great, Tyoho, for example, 5500 metres, or nearly 18,000 feet
(c. 80, c. 55). Some of the mountain masses or tablelands are 5000
metres, 6600, and 7100, judging from the shadows they oast, or 16,000,
21,000, or 28,000 feet (c. 55, 56).

EXCITEMENT THROUGHOUT EUROPE 57

points were near each other, and their light was pale
and weak. The third, which he judged to be about
three English miles in diameter, exhibited a much
stronger and a redder light. This he compared to a
burning coal covered with ashes. These points he
immediately conceived to be burning mountains, the
two first being either nearly extinguished or beginning
to bum, and the other in a state of actual eruptioa
Mr. Herschel did not fail to communicate his observa-
tion to the Royal Society ; and the philosophers in this
metropolis waited impatiently for the next new moon,
which would necessarily confirm the observation, be-
cause the eruption would probably not continue above
a month, and consequently the phenomena would be
then very different, if Mr. Herschel's conjecture was
well founded. Friday last, the 18th, the first day of
the new moon, several philosophical gentlemen attended
Mr. Herschel at his house in the country; but the
weather was too cloudy to permit any observation.
The next day I did myself the honour to visit him,
with two of my friends. Fortunately, the sky was
perfectly clear. After having examined, during two
hours, the enlightened part of the moon, by means of
Mr. Herschel's astonishing instruments, of which it is
impossible to form an adequate idea without having
seen them, we directed the telescope to the dark part
of this satellite, and the conjecture of this great
astronomer was instantly confirmed. The two first-
mentioned luminous points had totally disappeared,
and the fire of the other was become pale and weak.
The diameter of its crater was increased to about six
miles. Next month it will probably be entirely in-
visible. This discovery of volcanoes in the moon is a

58 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

proof that the matter of which it is composed is similar
to that of our earth, and also proves the existence of
a lunar atmosphere, which some philosophers have
doubted. The science of astronomy is therefore in-
finitely indebted to the zeal of Mr. Herschel.

" This phenomenon was also seen by Count Bruhl,
Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Aubert, etc. — Yours, etc., Z. Z." ^

Lalande, of the Royal College of France, told a
somewhat more wonderful story to the scientific world
in a paper which he wrote for the Academy of Dijon.
" Herschel," he says, " has seen in the moon two peaks
or mountains formed almost before his eyes ; there are
in their neighbourhood certain currents resembling
those torrents of lava that flow from a volcano at the
time of its greatest eruption. This observation was
confirmed by an actual eruption very visible in his
telescope of 9 feet : it is a fire or light like that of a
star of the fourth magnitude seen by the naked eye,
and it appeared on the obscure part of the moon. This
may help to explain the observation of Ulloa, who, in
the total eclipse of 1783, saw in the middle of the
moon a luminous point, which he conjectured to be a
perforation." Alas for the astronomers who probably
saw what they devoutly wished to see — a volcano in
action on the moon ! It was all moonshine, apparently
a reflection of light from our earth, when sixteen times
the amount of light showered on us at full moon is
then thrown by us on her ! But a hole through the
middle of the moon, perhaps twenty miles round !
There is no air that we know of on the half of the
moon that we see, and there is no water. There are

^ Scots Magazine^ toI. zliz. 818, quoted from Oe/wUemarCs Magcaitu,

WITS ON VOLCANOES IN THE MOON 59

ample traces of volcanic fires that once lighted her
surface, but they are all long gone out, and have left
nothing behind for us but insoluble problems and
mysterious wonders — a world of craters, lava, preci-
pices, and cinders. That astronomers were mistaken
was no discredit to them. They stumbled in the race
for knowledge. That was all. If the reports of
moving masses, still said to be seen in the moon, be
confirmed, there may not have been much of a stumble
after alL

While the observatories of Europe took a serious
view of these volcanoes and lava rivers in the moon,
the wits of London, and the King's equerries at
Windsor, were making fun of the whole thing, and
turning the batteries of ridicule on William Herschel.
Tea in the room of the wardrobe ladies at Windsor
Castle, especially with Mr. Bryant, the antiquary and
author in the company, " was extremely pleasant."
It was always antiquities or odd accidents with him :
" This night, Dr. Herschel and his newly discovered
volcanoes in the moon came in for their share." Next
evening three equerry colonels were at table. The
volcanoes again came into the eyes or lips of some of
the party. " I don't give up to Dr. Herschel at all,"
cried Colonel Manners ; " he is all system, and so they
are all ; and if they can but make out their systems
they don't care a pin for anything else. As to
Herschel, I liked him well enough till he came to his
volcanoes in the moon, and then I gave him up: I
saw he was just like the rest. How should he know
anything of the matter ? There's no such thing as
pretending to measure at such a distance as that"
The company sat silent while this outburst of lava.

6o HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

which was at once both right and absurdly wrong,
was coursing along the table. The lava had cooled, its
heat was forgotten, when Colonel Welbred quietly
interjected, "Sir Isaac Newton had been as much
scoffed and laughed at formerly as Herschel was
now ; but, in return, Herschel, hereafter, would be as
highly reverenced as Sir Isaac was at present." To
it they again set. Someone remarked that " upon the
heat in the air being mentioned to Dr. Heberden, he
had answered that he supposed it proceeded from the
last eruption in the volcano in the moon." " Ay," cried
Colonel Manners, " I suppose he knows as much of the
matter as the rest of them ; if you put a candle at the
end of a telescope, and let him look at it, he'll say,
What an eruption there is in the moon ! "

" But Mr. Bryant himself has seen this volcano from
the telescope."

" Why, I don't mind Mr. Bryant any more than Dr.
Heberden ; he's just as credulous as t'other."

And thus the equerries wrangled at Windsor, while
the rest of the world wondered or laughed at these
volcanoes in the moon.^

Herschel's belief in an atmosphere of the moon was
a heritage, a traditional heritage from the past. Had
he fully examined the grounds on which the tradition
was based, he would have opened a field of inquiry
that remained closed for nearly a century and a half.
In the total eclipse of the sun which happened in
Switzerland on the 12th of May 1706, the red flames
and the corona, features of an eclipse now known to
everybody, were observed, apparently for the first
time. Captain Stannyan, who was at Berne with the

^ Miss Barney, Letters, In, 87&->380.

CORONA AND RED CLOUDS IN ECLIPSES 6i

British Envoy, wrote that very day: "The sun was
totally darkened for 4 J minutes of time ; a fixed star
and a planet appeared very bright; and his getting
(mt of the eclipse was preceded by a blood-red streak
of light, from its left limb; which continued not
longer than 6 or 7 seconds of time;^ then part of
the sun's disk appeared, all of a sudden, bright as
Venus was ever seen in the night ; nay, brighter, and
in that very instant gave a light and shadow to things,
as strong as moonlight uses to do." Flamsteed adds
his own comment on this strange story : " The Captain
is set down as the first man ever heard of that took
notice of a red streak of light preceding the emersion
of the sun's body from a total eclipse. And I take
notice of it to you, because it infers that the moon
has an atmosphere; and its short continuance of
only 6 or 7 seconds of time, tells us that its height
is not more than the 5 or 6 hund/redth part of her
diameter,'^ that is, about four miles.

At Geneva the same eclipse was viewed by a friend
of Sir Isaac Newton, Facio Duillier, who, apparently,
did not see the " blood-red streak," but gives a good
description of the Crown, or as it is now called, the
Corona. "The clouds," he says, "did change of a
sudden their colour, and became red, and then of a
paJe violet. There was seen, during the whole time
of the total immersion, a whiteness, which did seem
to break out from behind the moon, and to encom-
pass it on all sides equally. The same whiteness was
but little determined, in its outward side, and was

' In the total eclipse of the present year there was seen "a brilliant
display of carmine-coloured prominences extending over an arc of at
least 60 deg." (TVmea, June 1, 1900, p. 10).

62 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

not broad the twelfth part of the diameter of the moon.
This planet did appear very black, and her disk very
well defined, within the whiteness, which encompassed
it about, and whose colour was the same with that of
a white crown or lioblo, of about four or five degrees
in diameter, which accompanied it, and had the moon
for its centre. ... A little time after the sun had
began to appear again, the whiteness and the crown,
which did encompass the moon, did entirely vanish." ^
Duillier's comment on this description of the corona is :
" The moon's atmosphere cannot well be supposed less
than of 130 miles, in perpendicular height. . . . Though
it was very plain that the atmosphere of the moon
must needs show itself, in the time of a total eclipse
of the sun; yet I do not know that anybody did
think of this, till in the last month of May, many
persons did actually see it." '

At Zurich Dr. Scheuchzer, in four lines of Latin,
describes how they had a solar eclipse, at once total
and annular; total, because the sun was wholly
covered by the moon ; annular, not properly so called,
but by refraction, since around the moon appeared a
ruddy brightness {f vigor rutUans), caused by rays
refracted through the moon's atmosphere.

The blood-red streak, the corona, the ruddy bright-
ness observed during the total eclipse of 1706, the

^ A letter from a friend at Marseilles informed Duillier that, during
totality, "there did remain one bright digit, all about the globe of the
moon" {Phil, Tram. (No. 306), p. 2237).

3 ''The red prominences were first seen during the solar eclipse of
8th July 1842 " (Proctor, Mcye, BrU, vol. ii. p. 788). Baily was not
the first to see them. Oaptain Stannyan and Dr. Scheuchzer carried off
the honour 136 years earlier. Facio Duillier has the credit of first
describing the corona.

THE MOON'S ATMOSPHERE 63

doubts about the moon's atmosphere, and the difficulties
experienced in accounting for the crown, "or else
concerning a meteor observed, not in our air, but in
the vapours that encompass the sun," might have
warned Dr. Halley and others to be especially watchful
when a total eclipse was due in Britain on April 22,
1715. Halley admitted the points named to be " very
singular, and deserving a great deal of attention." He
believed that a total eclipse of the sun had not been
seen in London since March 20, 1140 A.D. He passes
a gentle censure on the French astronomers for their
indifference to the total eclipse of 1706, but excuses
them on the ground that it was the first which " had
been observed with the attention the dignity of the
phenomenon requires." Strange to say, he made no
preparation to watch for " the blood-streak " and " the
luminous ring" that crowned the black body of the
moon, when the chance of seeing them again was
presented in 1715. They were seen and described by
him with a singular turning aside from facts to fables
about the moon's atmosphere, and the vapours that
were raised or the dews that fell on her surface.
Here is the account Halley gives of the red clouds
and the luminous ring in the eclipse of 1715:^ —

"A few seconds before the sun was all hid, there
discovered itself round the moon a luminous ring,
about a digit, or perhaps a tenth part of the moon's
diameter in breadth. It was of a pale whiteness or
rather pearl colour, seeming to me a little tinged with
the colours of the Iris, and to be concentric with the
moon, whence I concluded it the moon's atmosphere.
But the great height thereof far exceeding that of our

"Dews," Phil, Trans, xxix. p. 248.

64 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

earth's atmosphere ; and the observations of some, who
found the breadth of the ring to increase on the west
side of the moon as the emersion approached, together
with the contrary sentiments of those whose judg-
ment I shall always revere, makes me less confident,
especially in a matter whereto I own I gave not all
the attention requisite.

" Whatever it was, this ring appeared much brighter
and whiter near the body of the moon than at a
distance from it ; and its outward circumference,
which was ill defined, seemed terminated only by
the extreme rarity of the matter it was composed
of ; and in all respects resembled the appearance of an
enlightened atmosphere viewed from far ; but whether
it belonged to the sun or moon I shall not at present
undertake to decide.

" During the whole time of the total eclipse I kept
my telescope constantly fixed on the moon, in order to
observe what might occur in this uncommon appear-
ance : and I found that there were perpetual flashes or
coruscations of light, which seemed for a moment to
dart out from behind the moon, now here, now there,
on all sides ; but more especially on the western side
before the emersion ; and about two or three seconds
before it, on the same western side where the sun was
just coming out, a long and very narrow streak of a
dusky but strong red light seeemed to colour the dark
edge of the moon; though nothing like it had been
seen immediately after the immersion. But this
' , antly vanished upon the first appearance of the
theirs did also the aforesaid luminous ring."^

^® ^'.he eclipse of July 7 (8), 1842, BaUy writes : " The breadth of the
aescno ^^ ^.^^ circumference of the moon was nearly equal to half of

MOON'S ATMOSPHERE "RARE" 65

Halley adds to this beautiful description that the
darkness was " more perfect," and the stars seen were
more numerous, in some places than in others; but
"the light of the ring was to all alike." From the
north of England, too, he heard "that the luminous
ring round the moon was seen there, which waa
nowhere visible but while the eclipse was total"!
Nine years before Halley conjectured that the cause
of the corona or ring lay, "probably, in those very
vapours, which produce that pointed light, that has
been observed lying in a manner along the ecliptic,
and that has the sun for centre," the zodiacal light.

Into this traditional heritage of a lunar atmosphere
Herschel passed, till the blindness of unreasoning
belief was dispelled by facts. His atmosphere of the
moon, his three volcanoes on its surface, and its fitness
as a home for life, similar to what exists on the earth,
were long cherished beliefs, that had all to be xm-
leamed. Had the knowledge acquired from the total
eclipses of the sun in 1706 and 1715 niot been laid on
the shelf and forgotten, he would not have fallen into
these mistakes. Unfortunately, though twenty-eight
solar eclipses occur every eighteen years somewhere on
earth, no total eclipse has been seen from our island
since 1716. A few years passed away, and, in 1792,
Herschel came to the conclusion that we " have great
reason to surmise that the moon's atmosphere," as well
as that of Saturn's fifth satellite, is " extremely rare."

the moon's diameter. Its colour was quite white, not pearl colour, nor
yellow, nor red, and the rays had a vivid and flickering appearance,
somewhat like that which a gas-light illumination might be supposed
to assume if formed into a similar shape " {Astron. Trans, xv. p. 5).

Halley 's account of what he saw in 1715 is as distinct and vivid as
that of BaUy in 1842. See also Lalande, ii. 443.

5

CHAPTER V

THE DISCOVERY OF URANUS

The third paper sent by Hersehel to the Royal Society
was in the form of a letter to Dr. Watson from Mr.
William Hersehel of Bath, dated October 18, 1780.
It was a record of observations made in the three
years from 1777 to 1779, with the view of determining
whether our day is of the same length year after year.
A point so diflicult could be settled, he thought, only
by observing the length of the day in other planets.
This had been done, or attempted, for Venus and
Jupiter, by watching the time it took for a spot on
the face of the planet to return to the same position.
But in Venus, on account of her exceeding brilliance,
it had been done so imperfectly that her day was put
down roughly as of 23 hours' length. For Jupiter
the time of rotation on his axis was set down more
precisely at 9 hours 56 minutes, a result arrived at
by keeping careful watch on spots that may not be
fixed points on his disc, but movable on what we may
call trade- wind belts of clouds in his equator. These
spots "change so often that it is not easy, if at all
possible, to ascertain the identity of the same appear-
ance for any considerable length of time." Sometimes
a bright, at other times a dark spot, or belt, was
observed, but the time of its revolution round the

06

ROTATION OF MARS 67

planet varied so much that no reliance could be placed
on the result as a means of ascertaining whether our
day remains the same from age to age.

Herschel considered the planet Mars a more favour-
able field for experiment than Jupiter. On Mars he
saw spots of a different nature : " Their constant and
determined shape, as well as remarkable colour, show
them to be permanent and fastened to the body of
the planet. These will give the revolution of his
equator to a great certainty, and by a great number
of revolutions, to a very great exactness also." A
circumstance, with which Herschel was not acquainted,
materially helped him in his observations on Mars.
The atmosphere on that planet is not nearly so dense
as the earth's, and similar trade-wind belts to those
on Jupiter do not seem to exist. By these means he
concluded that the length of a day on Mars is a little
longer than our day, or 24 hrs. 39 min. 5 sec.^ The
value of an accurate measure of the length of day
in other planets he conceived to be this: "Future
astronomers may be enabled to make some estimate
of the general equability of the rotatory motions of
the planets. For if in length of time they should
perceive some small retardation in the diurnal motion
of a planet, occasioned by some resistance of a very
subtle medium in which the heavenly bodies perhaps
move, or, on the other hand, if there should be found
an acceleration from some cause or other, they might
then ascribe the alteration either to the diurnal motion
of the earth, or to the gyration of the other planet,
according as circumstances, or observed phenomena,

^ Time of rotation determined since Herschel's days, 24 hrs. 37 min.
227 sees.

68 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

should make one or the other of these opinions most
probable." This man could think, could reason and
observe : he had also unusual powers of imagination :
but he was only beginning his travels through the
infinitudes of space and time.

Three papers for the Royal Society in the course
of ten months! The musician of Bath puts himself
at once on a level with the first men of science in
the kingdom. He is modest, but he has in him the
confidence of true genius. In his retirement he had
been collecting facts from the heavens for six or seven
years. A chance of speaking out what he saw and
had gathered together was presented to him. He
seized it with all eagerness, and was making his voice
heard. In these papers he has been speaking to the
Royal Society, of which he was not even a member.
When he speaks next, about three months after, it is
not as the musician of Bathj but as a member of the
Royal Society ; and he speaks to the whole world and
to all time. This paper, which was read on April 26,
1781, and,is headed "Account of a Comet," was really
the beginning of modem astronomy. It fills only ten
pages of the Transactions,

He had been engaged for some time in an attempt,
not altogether novel, but certainly demanding great
labour, to find out the distance of the fixed stars.
His thoughts and plans were high, for though
more than a century has passed since then, the dis-
tances of not more than twenty or thirty out of
many millions can be said to be known, or perhaps
safely guessed. While thus engaged, rummaging
among the stars, "on Tuesday, 13th March, between
ten and eleven in the evening, he perceived a star, in

DISCOVERY OF A SUPPOSED COMET 69

the neighbourhood of H Oeminorum, that appeared
visibly larger than the rest. Being struck with its
uncommon magnitude, he compared it to H Qemin-
orum and the small star in the quartile between
Auriga and Gemini, and finding it so much larger
than either of them, suspected it to be a comet. . . .
The sequel has shown that my surmises were well
founded, this proving to be the comet we have lately
observed." By the method he followed he was "en-
abled to distinguish the quantity and direction of the
motion of this comet in a single day, to a much
greater degree of exactness than could have been done
in so short a time by a sector or transit instrument ;
nay, even an hour or two were intervals long enough
to show that it was a moving body, and, consequently,
had its size not pointed it out as a comet, the change
of place, though so trifling as 2^ seconds per hour,
would have been sufficient to occasion the discovery."
Satisfied that he had done all he could do, Herschel
concluded his paper by saying, " I failed not to give
immediate notice of this moving star, and was happy
to surrender it to the care of the Astronomer-Royal
and others, as soon as I found they had begun their
observations upon it" The moving star was not a
comet. It was a wanderer, who had been seen before
and classified as a fixed star. The planet was what
is now called Uranus.

The announcement of the discovery sent a flutter
of excitement through all the observatories of Europe,
which went on increasing when it was found that
they could not agree on what or who the stranger was.
Almost from its first appearance English astronomers
believed it to be a planet that had long been wanted

70 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

to account for difficulties in their art. The French
astronomers held to their faith in a comet moving
round the sun in an orbit nearly circular. Herschel,
praised everywhere as an observer " of great ardour
and ingenuity," stood aside from the friendly strife.
All observers were in debt to Bode, who found that
a star, marked No. 964 in Mayer's catalogue, had been
observed by him in 1756, had then been lost sight of,
and was probably the stranger. Abb6 Boscovich is
said to have been the first to prove that the orbit
was an ellipse ; but to Lexell, Professor of Astronomy
at St. Petersburg, is assigned the honour of showing
that the newly found body was not a comet, but a
planet, distant from the sun about nineteen times as
far as the earth.^ All with a name for science, from
Laplace downward, took part in the friendly strife.

It has been said that this discovery was an accident ;
it has been also said that, if Herschel had not made
it at the time he did, some other observer would before
long have had the luck to fall in with the stranger.
These criticisms are not creditable to those by whom
they were made. Call it accident or chance, the fact
remains that this novice, looking out for what he
could find in the heavens, and with instruments im-
proved by himself, discovered an unknown planet, and
extended the boundaries of the solar system to twice
the distance that had been received for thousands of
years. Such accidents bring fame, and are only called
luck by the envioua

One of the last-found planets of our solar system
was discovered about a year ago, also by accident, but
to the great honour of the discoverer. He was looking

1 Kobison, Edin., Phil. Trans, i. 805.

HOW EROS WAS DISCOVERED 71

for something else; he found what he was looking
for, and a new planet besides. What he was looking
for was one of the so-called nuisances of the heavens,
an asteroid, one of about 450, named 433**. To search
for it as Herschel had to do, even though its where-
abouts was known, called for labour and time. The
astronomer, who was on the lookout for it, lessened
both by exposing a photographic plate to the starry
sky. He was spreading a net to catch planets and
comets. A fixed star does not change its place during
the exposure of the plate, or, rather, the plate moves
as the star moves: a moving body, be it planet or
comet, does change its place. A point will thus repre-
sent a fixed star ; a line, however short, and however
faint the trace, represents a moving body. When
Herr Witt examined the exposed plate, he saw at
once the trace left by the asteroid he was in search
of; but another, a fainter and a longer trace of a
moving body, was also seen on the plate. It was the
trace of a planet hitherto unknown. An examination
of the stranger resulted in the discovery that he was
a ball twenty miles in diameter, and, excepting our
moon, the nearest of the planets to us, so near that
he may be made to tell us the exact distance we are
from the sun. His discoverer called him Eros, Love or
Cupid, evidently from his childish size.^ Herschel had
no such short-cuts to discovery in his day.

An immense impulse was given to the study of the
stars by HerscheFs discovery. It was not merely
what he achieved by being on the spot and on the
lookout. It was also by the lesson he taught astro-
nomers to do as he did. A band of twenty-four

^ Nineteenth Century^ April 1899, p. 612.

72 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

observers, suspecting, and with good reason, that a
well-kept watch would reveal unknown wonders in
the depths of space, undertook to search for other
planets. Had photographic plates or charts then been
part of the equipment of an observatory, the work
would have been easy, and the reward certain. But
plates and star -charts were not known; and the
twenty -four workers laboured and toiled in vain.
An outsider carried off first honours on the first day
of the century — Piazzi of Palermo, who had visited
Slough, had talked with Herschel and his sister, and
perhaps drawn a breath of inspiration from them
and their surroundings. The beaten twenty-four
astronomers did not retire from the field. Two years
later, Dr. Olbers, of Bremen, discovered another asteroid,
Pallas; and two years later still, Harding, in the
same neighbourhood, discovered a third, Juno. Olbers,
wisely using imagination in the pursuit of science,
came to the conclusion that these small bodies were
pieces of a planet which had burst or exploded, and
that other pieces would be found floating about in
space. He acted on the idea, and rediscovered Piazzi's
Ceres, which had been lost again, as well as a fourth
asteroid, Vesta. Then the hunt for more pieces of the
disrupted planet ceased, till, about forty years later, it
again received a fresh impetus from Hencke's discovery
of Astrsea, and was continued by Mr. Hind at the
Regent Park Observatory in London, and others, with
such success that floating pieces have been netted by
hundreds, grumbled at as nuisances, and assigned the
honour of having been thrown off direct by the sun
himself, not blown into space by a disrupted planet.
One of these pigmy planets was named Lucretia, after

LETTER TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS 73

Herschel's sister. Such were some of the fruits of
William Herschel's earliest studies among the stars.

The nature of the wandering stranger discovered on
March 13, 1781, was not fully known for some months.
Herschel had surrendered the care of his new world to
the astronomers of Europe, and they could not make
up their minds about it, till Lexell of St. Petersburg led
the way by showing that it was an outlying primary
planet. A whole year elapsed, and Herschel had
resumed his observations on this "singular star"
before he thought of giving it a name. Events had
happened during the interval which affected his view
of the name it should bear: he had become Royal
Astronomer to George ill., had received from him a
yearly pension, was pursuing a profitable trade as a
maker of telescopes under the King's patronage, and
was housed under the shelter of Windsor Castle. It
should cause no surprise, therefore, that, evidently after
long consideration, he addressed the following letter to
Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society : —

"To Sir Joseph Banks, Baet., P.R.S.

"Sir, — By the observations of the most eminent
astronomers in Europe it appears that the new star^
which I had the honour of pointing out to them in
March 1781, is a primary planet of our solar system.
A body so nearly related to us by its similar condition
and situation, in the unbounded expanse of the starry
heavens, must often be the subject of the conversation,
not only of astronomers, but of every lover of science
in general. This consideration then makes it necessary
to give it a name, whereby it may be distinguished
from the rest of the planets and fixed stars.

74 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

''In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations
of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were
given to the planets as being the names of their
principal heroes and divinities.^ In the present more
philosophical SBra, it would hardly be allowable to
have recourse to the same method, and call on Juno,
Pallas, Apollo, or Minerva for a name to our new
heavenly body. The first consideration in any par-
ticular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its
chronology : if in any future age it should be asked,
when this last-found planet was discovered ? it would
be a very satisfactory answer to say, * In the Reign of
King George the Third.' As a philosopher then, the
name of Georgium Sidus presents itself to me, as an
appellation which will conveniently convey the in-
formation of the time and country where and when it
was brought to view. But as a subject of the best of
Kings, who is the liberal protector of every art and
science ; — as a native of the country from whence this
Illustrious Family was called to the British throne ; —
as a member of that Society, which flourishes by the
distinguished liberality of its Royal Patron; — and,
last of all, as a person now more immediately under
the protection of this excellent Monarch, and owing
everything to His unlimited bounty; — I cannot but
wish to take this opportunity of expressing my sense
of gratitude, by giving the name Georgium Sidus,

' Qeorgium Sidus
— jam nunc assuesce vocari' (Virg. Oeorg,\

to a star, which (with respect to us) first began to
shine under His auspicious reign.

^ Herschel might have known better than write this : see M. de
Lalande's Astronomy^ sees. 639, 640.

NAMING OF THE NEW PLANET 75

" By addressing this letter to you, Sir, as President
of the Royal Society, I take the most effectual method
of communicating that name to the Literati of Europe
which I hope they will receive with pleasure. I have
the honour to be, with the greatest respect, etc.,

"W. Herschel."

When Herschel discovered the planet Uranus he had
received no favour and no bounty from King or
people. Nor did the King extend his patronage to
him till fifteen months had elapsed. Galileo was in
receipt of a handsome allowance from the Grand Duke
of Tuscany, when he discovered the satellites of Jupiter,
and called them the Medicean Stars. It was not only
pardonable to do this ; it was most natural. But science
refused to endorse the flattery: and scientific men,
especially on the Continent, were equally unwilling to
accept the name proposed by Herschel for the newly
discovered planet. For many years it continued to be
called the Georgian Star, or the Georgium Sidus, in this
country, though not without strong protests. While
scientific men in Britain allowed that "George the
Third has many titles to be remembered by the friends
of science, to which few of his contemporaries have
any pretensions," they maintained, " We shall therefore
do well to anticipate the decision of posterity, by at
once adopting a term that must ultimately prevail."
No one thinks of perpetuating the name Georgian now.
Uranus has displaced it, and justly. The judgment of
posterity has gone against the name proposed by the
discoverer and that of Herschel^ generously proposed
by Lalande. Heathenism and antiquity have carried
the day. Everyone must decide for himself whether

^6 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

this was right, or whether the same rule should hold
among the stars as has been allowed to hold on earth,
where an adventurer gives his name to a New World,
and the real discoverer has to rest content with naming
a province of it, perhaps a province of little worth.

In writing this letter to the President of the Royal
Society, William Herschel could plead more grounds
for justification than we might be disposed, at first
sight, to allow. That he was recognised by the King
as a discoverer and a leader of thought was a great
honour, recommending him at once to the nation and
to the whole world. That he was paid a salary out of
the King s or the nation's purse, and was placed by the
King near the palace and brought into close relations
with the Royal Family is also manifest. We are
bound to give due weight to these considerations in
the mind of an upright and honourable man, who
deeply respected his sovereign, and knew best the
amount of his own indebtedness. But history tells
more than one story, that goes far to justify Herschel's
name for the newly discovered star. It was not an
uncommon thing to exalt an earthly prince to a throne
in earthly skies. Probably we shall all admit that this
was a mistake, perhaps a degradation of true science,
which knows no distinction between king and beggar,
and whose boundaries have been extended, to quote
the words of Galileo, a hundred thousand fold by
those whom popes and princes despised- But the
fact is beyond dispute. The hair of Berenice, the
Queen of Egypt and the murderess of the lover by
whom she was slighted, was carried oflf from the
temple of Venus, to whom it was vowed, and placed by
Conon as a constellation among the stars. Sobieski,

STARS NAMED AFTER KINGS 7J

the valiant deliverer of Eastern Europe from the
Turkish power, got a similar honour done him by
Hevelius in the then invented constellation called
Sobieski's Shield. Galileo felt himself under such
obligations to the ducal house of Tuscany that he
named the four moons of Jupiter, which he discovered,
the Medicean Stars, a name they long continued to
bear. The honour of a place in the heavens was
great. It was also much sought after, so much so
that Galileo was told " he would do a thing just and
proper in itself, and at the same time render himself
rich and powerful for ever," if he " named the next
star which he should discover after the name of the
great star of France, as well as the most brilliant of
all the world," Henry of Navarre. Fortunately, in this
respect at least, he had not the chance, otherwise we
might have had the starry heavens peopled with the
princely nonentities of earth. Royer, in 1679, did a
similar honour to Louis xiv., by forming a constella-
tion, called The Sceptre, for that monarch's glory ;
Messier, after the astronomer of that name, was
another recently invented constellation on which
Boscovich made the lines —

"Sidera, non Messes, Messerius iste tuetur;
Certe erat ille suo dignus inesse polo."

But no one would have expected a man of science so
famous as Edmund Halley, to invent a constellation in
honour of Charles ii.. The Oak, in memory of his
escape after Worcester, or that Flamsteed would have
placed so rotten a thing as the " Heart of Charles ii."
among the stars.^

^ Lalande, i. 283, 284.

78 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

While we are satisfied that there is no ground for
finding fault with Hersehel's name for the new planet
he discovered, we are more satisfied that, by the mouth
of Bode, the jury, to whom he required to appeal,
disallowed the flattery, and called the planet Uranus,
not even Herschel, as Lalande proposed. The next
planet that was discovered, the first of the asteroids,
was named by its discoverer Ceres Ferdinandea
after a contemptible King of Naples, but Ceres has
long since swallowed Ferdinandea up. Even at the
time an amused cynicism, speaking in the Letters
of Horace Walpole, was saying, " Must not that host
of worlds be christened ? Mr. Herschel himself has
stood godfather for His Majesty to the new Sidus.
His Majesty has a numerous issue ; but they and all
the princes and princesses in Europe cannot supply
appellations enough for twenty millions of new-born
stars." ^

In the year 1782 Herschel not only continued to
prosecute the studies he had begun, but ventured into
new and almost untrodden fields of research. Two or
three months were cut out of the working time of that
year by a summons to Windsor to see the King and
hear what he might do for him. But his activity and
enjoyment in work made up for lost time. In 1780 he
contributed two papers, or twenty-five large pages, to
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ;
in 1781 he contributed two papers, or thirty-five pages ;
and in 1782, notwithstanding the loss of two months,
four papers, or nearly one hundred pages — a good
year's scientific work for any man, more especially for
one who was giving thirty or even thirty-eight music

^ Letters^ yU 259.

DOUBLE STARS : DISTANCES OF STARS 79

lessons to his pupils per week ; groaning and fretting
under the incapacity of not a few of them — a man who
had to be in his place conducting a band or a concert,
and supervising a church's music, or who, instead of
seeking rest in sleep, when the day's weary work
was done, would often spend the night in observing
the stars. His sister, who was his invariable com-
panion in these night watches, had ample reason to
say of him, " He did in one season more than anyone
else could have done, and would have resumed the
hv/at [for Saturn's satellites] the next fifteen years, if
nothing had interfered."

The new path on which he entered, and which led
him into other and most attractive fields of inquiry,
was the distance of what are called the fixed stars
from the solar system. He knew that at the distance
of the nearest of them, twice the sun's distance from
the earth, immense though it seems, appears no bigger
than a needle point, and cannot be used as a base line
for measurement, or, indeed, as a line at all. He gave
up the thought of attempting to solve the problem
from that, the most natural and the easiest side. It
was good for neighbours so near us as Mars and Venus.
It was useless for Sirius or Arcturus. Following,
perhaps, the example of Galileo, he believed that
observations on stars so close together that neither
the naked eye nor ordinary telescopes could separate
them, and make two out of one, would lead to a
discovery of their distance. He did not succeed in his
purpose, but he was " introduced to a new series of
observations and discoveries." He resolved to examine
every star in the heavens with the utmost attention
and a very high power, that he might collect such

8o HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

materials for this research as would enable him to fix
his observations upon those that would best answer
his end. The subject promises so rich a harvest that
he cannot help inviting every lover of astronomy to
join him in observations that must inevitably lead
to new discoveries. He took some pains to find out
what double stars had been recorded by astronomers ;
but " Nature, that great volume, appeared to him to
contain the best catalogue upon this occasion."

The results of this search of the heavens appeared a
month later in a Catalogue of Double Stars. They
were "not only double stars, but also treble, double-
double, quadruple, double-treble, and multiple." And
he noticed, in a strangely prophetic vein of inspired
imagination, not shrined in the temple of fact for more
than twenty years after, " It is much too soon to form
any theories of small stars revolving round large ones."
Of 269 of the suns contained in this catalogue only
42 had been previously observed. While pursuing
researches so laborious and so delightful, he was
driven to devise ingenious improvements on the
micrometer, as the contrivance wa« called that is used
for measuring small spaces. But Herschel's thoughts
were turned into other channels in the summer of
1782. He was raising questions we are only getting
answers to now.

While Herschel was thus rapidly rising into fame,
he was not forgetful of the sister who generously
sacrificed her own wishes and prospects as a singer
to advance his as an astronomer. During the time
she was free from her numerous engagements as the
thrifty housekeeper, the careful secretary and time-
keeper, the reviser and reducer of observations, she

CAROLINE HERSCHEUS EIGHT COMETS 8i

amused herself by sweeping the heavens for comets
with a five-feet reflector, of which her brother had
made her a present. She was so successful that her
fame soon sounded over Europe. " Miss Herschel," one
writer reports, "sister of the celebrated astronomer,
has observed a comet, and its orbit has been calculated.
This is the seventy-third comet of which we know
the period." This celestial visitor was talked of in
Windsor Castle as the Lady's Comet. Unfortunately,
the name was not retained, as it ought to have been,
or at least given to a later discovery by Miss Herschel.
Between 1786 and 1797 she discovered eight comets
altogether, but of only five was she the first discoverer.
The seventh, seen by her on November 7, 1795, was
specially worthy of this name, but is now known as
Encke's Comet. Her value as an assistant to her
brother, besides her own personal merit as a woman
of science, got for her a pension of £50 from the Civil
List, granted to the King by Parliament. It was
sufficient for the modest wants of a woman who not
only handled a telescope with the dexterity of a
practised observer, but, when sixty years of age, spent
some of the last days of her stay at Slough " in paint-
ing and papering the rooms she was to occupy in a
small house of her brother's, attached to the Crown
Inn, to which she removed."

Year after year, from 1780 to 1812, the active mind
and the prolific pen of William Herschel enriched the
Proceedings of the Royal Society with one or more
papers, which astonished the world of science and
attracted the attention of mankind. The years 1813,
1816 were blanks, but 1814, 1815, 1817, and 1818
showed no f eebling of hand or eye, although for years
6

82 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

his strene^th had been failing: under the pressure of
burdens kid on him as King's ^tronomer-unnecessary
burdens. Without induing the diagrams, often Z
themselves a heavy labour, these papers are spread
over two thousand quarto pages, an extraordinary
record of hard, honest, earnest work. His first two
papers were said to be " communicated by Dr. Watson,
Jr., of Bath, F.R.S., and written by Mr. William
Herschel of Bath." The same designation of the
astronomer appears again in the Proceedings for
1781; but in the end of the year it is replaced by
Mr. Herschel, F.R.S. In 1783-84-85 we find, William
Herschel, Esq., F.RS. But from 1786, the year in
which he received the degree of LL.D. from the
University of Edinburgh,^ to 1815, the style is,
William Herschel, LL.D., F.RS. In 1817, 1818, it
becomes Sir William Herschel, Knt Chielp.y LL.D.,
F.B.S. The musician of Bath had made good his
right to rank with the noblest and the most learned
of men.

^ Professor Holden, in his Life, writes (p. 47) : " It was only in 1786
tliat he became *Dr. Herschel,* through the Oxford degree of LIj.D."
This Oxford degree of LL.D. has of late been changed in his case into
D.C.L. The Oxford '' Catalogue of all graduates . . . between Oct.
10, 1659, and Dec. 31, 1850," does not contain his name, except as the
father of Sir John Herschel, on whom the degree of D.CL. was
conferred. The date of the Edinburgh degree is April 10, 1786, and
is the only ground I can discover for the title LL.D., that he takes in
all his papers from 1786 to 1818. The honour of LL.D. from Oxford
was first claimed for Herschel in 1798-9. See Public Characters, i. 396.

CHAPTER VI

ENDOWMENT OF RESEARCH

/

It was clear to men of science that something had to
be done for Herschel. He could not toil or slave as a
teacher of music and a conductor of concerts during
the working hours of the day, and improve the tele-
scope or keep watch on the stars by night, without
discredit to a nation that was proud of its maritime
supremacy, and offered a large reward for the best
means of finding the longitude at sea. Since the
discovery of Uranus, his name was in everybody's
mouth, especially in Bath. People of celebrity, with
or without introductions, came to see him. Among
them was the Astronomer-Eoyal, Dr. Maskelyne, who
proved a steady and admiring friend. At their first
interview, Caroline thought they were quarrelling.
Eagerness to make sure that this musician was a
reality, not a sham, may account for the high tone of
voice that sounded to her like quarrelling, while her
brother's remark when Maskelyne left, "That is a
devil of a fellow," reads more like a compliment than a
censure. Dr. Watson, between whom and Herschel a
friendship had sprung up, that lasted for the remainder
of a long life, was constantly at his house, helping to
grind or polish, offering money to meet expenses, which
was gently declined, and communicating papers and

88

84 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

letters from Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal
Society. Herschel was rapidly outgrowing his sur-
roundings. The dullest eye could see that something
had to be done for the honour of the country.
Herschel, though resident in England, was not an
Englishman; but he was a subject of the King of
England as Elector of Hanover, and the nation that
reaped the honour, it might soon come to be the profit,
of his discoveries, was bound to mark its sense of the
value it set upon his presence within its borders. The
Royal Society did what they could, but it was far
from enough. As they honoured Benjamin Franklin
with the Copley Medal in 1753 for "curious experi-
ments and observations on electricity," so they showed
their high regard for William Herschel by awarding
the same medal to him in November 1781 for his
" discovery of a new and singular star." On Decem-
ber 6 of that year he was also elected a Fellow of
the Society. But these honours did not meet the case.
They were prizes won in the race for fame ; they did
not provide a living or leisure for further triumphs.
But the King personally was bound to interpose. He
had a name throughout Europe for love of science, and
especially of astronomy, which no other monarch en-
joyed. A great French writer described him, long
before Herschel appeared above the horizon, as " v^ri-
tablement amateur de la Physique et de TAstronomie."
For years he had supported an observatory and a King's
Astronomer at Richmond. Parliament had provided
ample funds in the form of a Civil List, of which at that
time it got no account. But the funds were squandered
or spent with such a lavish hand that enormous arrears
remained unpaid. Apparently the King was helpless.

OPINION ON HERSCHEL'S MERITS 85

Public opinion outside of scientific circles had also
sometCing to say about Herschel, for he had become
a power and a wonder in the country. " Mr. Herschers
astronomical papers," it said, "have justly excited
peculiar attention; and his account of a comet, or,
perhaps, a new planet, hath procured for him the
honour of Sir Godfrey Copley's Medal. Mr. Herschel,
who is a musician at Bath, is one of those extraordin-
ary men, whose genius for astronomy and whose talents
for the improvement of instruments have enabled him
to break through every disadvantage of situation, and
to make discoveries which, as they call for the warmest
approbation of mankind, ought to obtain for him a
more than common encouragement and patronage."^
A year later the same organ of public opinion wrote ;
" Mr. Herschel, of whom we spoke in our last volume,
hath carried on his astronomical researches with amaz-
ing success. He hath discovered a great number of
double and triple stars, which are surprisingly and
beautifully diversified in their appearance and their
colours. The new star or comet, for the discovery
of which he obtained the Gold Medal in 1781, is now,
without controversy, ascertained by him to be a regular
primary planet, beyond the orbit of Saturn. He hath
given it the name of the Georgium Sidus, in honour
of the King, who hath settled a handsome salary upon
him and taken him into his immediate service. This
instance of Royal patronage and munificence to eminent
scientific merit is equally glorious to His Majesty and
to Mr. Herschel." «

The instincts of the writer were correct, but his

^ ArmtMl Register for 1781 [118].
3 Annual Begister, 1782 [219].

86 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

knowledge of "the handsome salary" was perhaps
defective.

" Among the Bath visitors were many philosophical
gentlemen, who used to frequent the levees at St.
James's when in town. Colonel Walsh,^ in particular,
informed my brother that from a conversation he had
had with His Majesty, it appeared that in the spring
he was to come with his seven-foot telescope to the
King. Similar reports he received from many others,
but they made no great impression nor caused any
interruption in his occupation or study," till " one
morning in Passion Week, as Sir William Watson was
with my brother, talking about the pending journey
to town, my eldest nephew arrived to pay us a visit,
and brought the confirmation that his uncle was ex-
pected with his instrument in town." * This nephew
was George Griesbach, son of the elder daughter in the
Herschel family, and a musician well known and
favoured at Court. A chaise was at the door to take
brother and sister to Bristol, ten miles away, for a
forenoon rehearsal bf the Messiah, which was to be
performed in the evening. The conductor was too
much absorbed in his nephew's news from Court to
attend the rehearsal. Caroline was left to do it for
him, and to fill "the music box with the necessary
parts for between ninety and one hundred performers."
This was how news of the endowment of research came
from London to Bath. It was a reality, not a romance
gilded with glory, like the news brought by an imagin-
ary rider from Ghent to Aix. But the news, however

^ Apparently one of the King's equerries, of whom we shall hear more
in the course of the story.
' Caroline Herschel, MemoirSf p. 44.

VISIT TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE 87

Batisfactory, came in so unsatisfactory a way, and were
so long in bearing fruit, that something was at work
behind the scenes delaying progress. It appeared that
the King's private astronomer, Mr. De Mainborg, was
dead. Herschers friends imagined he was to succeed
to the vacant post at Kew,^ for George ill. was known
for his patronage of astronomy long before he heard
of HerscheL In an observatory at Richmond, built
under the superintendence of Bevis, 140 feet long and
of two storeys, were several grand instruments made
by Sisson of London.*

Laden "with everything necessary for viewing
double stars," Herschel. accompanied by his friend.
Sir William Watson, left home on May 8. No letter
reached the anxious household at Bath for a fortnight.
At last Caroline and Alexander learned that " he had
been introduced to the King and Queen, and had
permission to come to the concerts at Buckingham
House, where the King conversed with him about
astronomy." He was also so favoured that " the King
gave him leave to come to hear the Griesbachs play at
the private concert which he has every evening."
Even his brother Alexander was known to the King,
and was inquired after in the same breath apparently
as he inquired after " the great speculum." Had Miss
Bumey been telling the story, she would probably
have said that " What ? what ? what ? " looked upon the
two as creatures of the same kind. But his pupils
and Mr. Palmer, the manager of the theatre at Bath,
must be told that he could not return till the King
had seen the planets with the seven-foot reflector, and
given him permission to leave. That telescope had

* Memoirs, p. 821. ^ Lalande, Pre/ace, i, xxxvii.

88 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

found a temporary home in the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich, where it put Dr. Maskelyne out of conceit
with the instruments he had for national use, and, not
long before, for exhibition, with handling by the public,
at so much per head!^ Colonel Walsh again makes
his appearance as entertaining Herschel at dinner with
the Astronomer-Royal, and Mr. Aubert, a well-known
observer of those days. Both of them were delighted
with the new telescope and its inventor.

Maskelyne was provided at Greenwich with two
mural quadrants of eight feet radius at a cost of £280
each, a great transit instrument, a sector of 12 feet,
and many other instruments. An assistant also was
kept constantly at work on the observations made.
Astronomers allowed that at no place had so many
good observations been made as at Greenwich, but
Maskelyne was dissatisfied when he compared the
instruments with the telescope of Herschel, the work
of the ablest craftsmen in England with that of a
novice.* On February 20, 1806, the French mathe-
maticians, " notwithstanding the spirit of hostility that
had so long animated England and France against one
another," gave a most gratifying proof of the regard
in which they held Maskelyne and his predecessors in
the Royal Observatory at GreenwicL They wrote by
De Lambre to Maskelyne, sending him seven copies
of their newly published astronomical tables, and
paying the homage of gratitude and esteem to "the
author of the greatest and most precious collection of
observations that exists." They were " deduced, by the
rules of Laplace, chiefly from a series of more than
three thousand two hundred observations made at

1 Weld, ii. 28. » Lalande, FrefoM, xxxvii. (1771).

BARGAINING WITH HERSCHEL 89

Greenwich between the years 1766, 1793."^ Science
was thus the mother of peace and goodwill between
two bitterly hostile nations.

An attack of influenza, which wore off in less than
a week ; a series of dinners, at which the new lion of
science was exhibited to the gaze of "the best company,"
and little was talked " of but what they called his great
discoveries " ; two nights of star-gazing at Greenwich ;
state concerts, at which the King " kept him in conver-
sation for half an hour," and even asked George
Griesbach for a solo-concerto that his uncle might hear
him play; acting the showman by explaining the
speculum to the Princesses, and, on a cloudy evening,
showing them, " with fine effect " through the telescope,
a pasteboard Saturn at the bottom of the garden wall,"
— ^these and other tricks of this "showman of the
heavens " were his employment for the next few weeks.
" Company is not always pleasing," he wrote, " and I
would much rather be polishing a speculum." In the
midst of this mental dissipation he was brought down
from heaven to earth by his money running short.
Several times he wrote to Bath for a supply ! Delays
so unnecessary, and the thoughtless indifference with
which a working musician was kept hanging on at
Court, without regard to his loss or his expenses, were
not creditable to those concerned. It looks as if there
were a hitch somewhere.

His sister relates in a letter written in 1842, twenty
years after his death, that the King was surrounded
by wiseacres, who knew how to bargain. They pro-
posed to send her brother back to Hanover on a salary
of £100 a year. Her idea was that Parliament had

^ £din, Itev,, 1809, pp. 66, 69.

go HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

" granted to the King £80,000 a year for encouraging
sciences." She also believed that West the painter
and her brother were the first who benefited by this
grant. She is referring, of course, to the arrange-
ments regarding the Civil List, which came into effect
in 1782.1

It seems to me that the King had more serious
diflSculties in dealing with William Herschel than are
generally supposed. Unquestionably he had deserted
the army of Hanover after a severe defeat, and in
presence of an advancing enemy. A quarter of a
century had passed since then ; but could the Elector
of Hanover, as King of Great Britain, pass over an
offence so grave, and knowingly honour the offender
even after that lapse of time? So long as it was
simply letting bygones be bygones, the matter was
easy of solution; but it came to have another look
when the offender was received under the shelter of
the palace, admitted to intercourse with the Royal
Family, and paid a pension out of the King's purse.
That the offence was unknown to the King is altogether
improbable. He knew Herschel's younger brother,
Alexander, and inquired after him at a state concert
in Buckingham House. He knew also the Griesbachs,
Herschel's nephews, and employed five of them at these
concerts. A family from the town of Hanover, and of
such outstanding ability, would be so much in the
mouth of Hanoverians that echoes at least of their
gossip could not fail to reach the King's ears. The
King's knowledge of every petty detail of gossip among
the Hanoverians had passed into a proverb in England.
"Modem poets differ from the Elizabethans in this,"

^ Memoirs, p. 321.

DELAYS AND DIFFICULTIES 91

Keats wrote, while George ill. was living : " each of the
modems, like an Elector of Hanover, governs his petty
state, and knows how many straws are swept daily
from the causeways in all his dominions, and has a
continual itching that all the housewives should have
their coppers well scoured."^ It is manifest, too, that
Herschel had no desire to return to his Hanover home,
or even to the mother who aided him to escape in
1757, and was the foolish cause of many perplexities
and troubles. In fifteen years his visits were few,
only three apparently, and his stay was brief. There
was something in the air of the place that disagreed
with him. It may therefore be that the King required
to consult his ministers in Hanover before he could
overlook the offence of a young guardsman, who had
now become an astronomer, with whose fame all
Europe was ringing. For two months the uncertainty
about William HerscheFs future continued. Communi-
cation with Hanover on business of state in those
days was conducted by a " quarterly messenger," who
was sometimes delayed, even in George iv.'s reign,
forty years after this time. Delay was thus perhaps
unavoidable.^ Clearly, the King or his advisers could
not make up their minds what to do. At last they
came to a decision in the way people do when in doubt.
They split the difference, and made a bargain with
Herschel unworthy of the King and the country. It
looks as if Britain incurred odium for the sake of
Hanover.

That the bargain included a pardon under the King's

* Life, February 3, 1818, i. 84.

* Memovra of Sir William Knighton, i. 321 ; Car, Her. also, pp. 282,
240, 239.

92 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

own hand is asserted on what is called unquestionable
evidence, and is in itself extremely probable from a
story told of George iv. on his visit to Hanover in
1821. "Early in the morning," his physician-in-
ordinary says, "a poor woman, with a countenance
apparently much worn with sorrow, on her knees
presented a petition to the King's Hanoverian cham-
berlain, which was rejected. I saw this from the
saloon, from which I was looking down on the many
thousand persons assembled in the courtyard, and I
observed the expression of despair which followed. I
hastened down, fearing to lose sight of her, got her
petition, and presented it to the King.

"It craved his mercy for her husband, who was
doomed to five years' hard labour in a fortress. She
was the mother of eight littte children, and, it need
not be added, in great poverty and want. The crime
was of a nature to be pardoned, and this was done
with his pen instantly ; for here his authority is
absolute. We had the poor woman in the saloon, and
you may imagine the rest." ^

The view taken of the bargain at the time was given
voice to by Caroline Herschel, and has since been
frequently repeated to the King's discredit, without the
retractation which she made after her brother's death.
Here is the retractation. Writing to her nephew, in
April 1827, she says : — " P.8. — I must say a few words
of apology for the good King, and ascribe the close
bargains which were made between him and my
brother to the ahdbby, Tnean-spirited advisers, who
were undoubtedly consulted on such occasions; but
they are dead and gone, and no more of them ! Sir J.

^ Knighton, i. 169.

SHABBINESS OF KING'S ADVISERS 93

Banks remained a sincere, well-meaning friend to the
last." Not many days after (May 8, 1827) she writes
what it never occurred to her, apparently, might
account for this alleged mean-spirited shabbiness:
"When in 1758 he again went to England, it was
under such unpleasant circumstances that he was
obliged to leave it to his mother to send his trunk
after him to Hamburg." i The nation or mob that
shot Admiral Byng for incapacity four months before
the Hanoverian bandsman deserted, that cashiered Lord
George Sackville for less two years before, and that
not only ridiculed the King's own uncle, "the poor
Duke," as Cumberland was called, " the lump of fat
crowned with laurel on the altar," ^ but " were new
grinding their teeth and nails to tear him to pieces the
instant he lands," ^ for a similar fault to Byng's, had
to be reckoned with in bestowing honours on a deserter.
So the King may have thought, and so his dilatoriness
and apparent shabbiness may be accounted for, as well
as the secrecy in which the affair was shrouded during
their lives.

But there are circumstances which involve in still
greater obscurity the whole of these so-called bargains
between the King and William Herschel. Some years
after the death of both, an English writer spoke of the
ingratitude of England. But there is no proof that
Herschel, though settled in England, was ever natural-
ised His sister, so far as words could go, threw off
her German nationality ; but words are not law. " I
was always sure to be noticed by the Duke of Cam-
bridge as his countrywoman," she wrote in 1835, " (and

* Memoirs, p. 211. ^ Referring to a cartoon of the day.

» Walpole's Letters, iii. 476, 284.

94 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

that is what I want, I will be no Hanoverian!)"^
That these sentiments were simply an echo of her
brother's, we can scarcely doubt. As far also as is now
known, "the bargains" made were not reduced to
writing. Everything seems to have been done by word
of mouth. In fact, George iii. and his advisers dealt
with Herschel, not as an Englishman but as a German.
No English honours were bestowed on him, such as
were bestowed on younger or less deserving men.
Sir Humphry Davy received the honour of knight-
hood from the Prince Regent in 1812. He was forty
years younger than Herschel. Dr. Smith, one of the
founders of the Linnean Society, was knighted by the
Prince two years afterwards, although he was not
specially known as a man of science.^ Two years
later Herschel received a paltry honour, at lefist as
Englishmen counted honours. There must have been
reasons for this apparent neglect. But whatever they
were, the truth remains that as far as can now be
known, the rashness and anxiety of a woman of small
capacity saved her son from the life of a musician in
a Hanoverian regiment, not to his honour or hers
certainly, and made a present of him to the cause of
science with results of unspeakable honour to himself
and the human race. The lad of nineteen who was
induced by his mother to desert an army, led by an
incompetent " lump of fat," as they then said, was no
coward. He perilled life and limb too often in his work
as an astronomer to be counted a poltroon as a soldier.
When George ill. thus resolved to endow research
in the person of William Herschel by appointing him
Royal Astronomer at a salary of £200 a year, coupled

* Memoirs, p. 276. » Weld, History, etc., ii. 327, 198.

"SHOWMAN OF THE HEAVENS" 95

with permission to make and sell telescopes for his
own behoof, and with the requirement that he should
act as ''showman of the heavens" to princes and
princesses, it was neither an uncommon nor an un-
generous act in the world of science. It is presented
to us in the gossip of the day as lacking in generosity,
and reflecting small credit on the King and his advisers.
The salary of Dr. Maskelyne, then Astronomer-Royal,
and the head of the most famous observatory in
Europe, a man of high standing to boot, and of world-
wide scientific attainment, was only £300, to the dis-
credit of the nation, not of the King. Besides, the
Civil last from which, presumably, the pension was
paid, was then in a transition and probably a crippled
state. Two years before, Mr. Dunning moved in the
Commons, and, after a feeble resistance, carried, " That
it was competent to the House, whenever they thought
proper, to examine into and correct abuses in the
expenditure of the Civil List revenues." The Court
required to be on its guard, as, in the very year the
pension was granted to Herschel, the King sent a
message to the Commons, " requesting a discharge of
arrears of Civil List, amounting to nearly £296,000;
the House voted the requisite sum." ^

The endowment of research was far from being a
new thing in Europe. It had been the work of princes ;
it was now becoming the work of parliaments and
people. James I. when, in defiance of the witches of
Scotland and Denmark, he crossed the North Sea to

* Adolphus, Eistmy, iii. 119, 372 (1780, 1782). By . the Parlia-
mentary regulations passed in 1782 ''no pension was to exceed £800 a
year '* (16th April) (CasselFs History^ iv. 290-91). In 1783 arrears were
again accumulating (Cassell, iv. 301).

96 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

fetch home his bride, spent eight days under the roof
of "that princely promoter of astronomy," Tycho
Brahe. He found the astronomer living in comfort,
encouraged by the splendid allowances of the King of
Denmark, and able to build an observatory, which is
said to have cost £20,000. Though always in straits
for money, he not only honoured Tycho at his depar-
ture with " a magnificent present, but also addressed
to him a copy of versea" One of James's grandsons,
Charles ii., appointed Flamsteed to be Astronomer-Royal
at a salary of £100 a year. So inadequately was he
paid that he had to eke out his income by taking
orders in the Church of England. But James's great-
grandson, William, was a more generous patron of
science than his uncle. In his reign Newton received
the post of Master of the Mint with a salary of £1200
or £1500 a year, at a time when the commercial interests
of England required a man of great intelligence, honesty,
and resource to rescue society from the embarrassments
into which incompetence and gambling had plunged
the Mint and the country. A man of ability was
required to cope with the evils of the time, and
Newton, in spite of the sneers with which his appoint-
ment was hailed even by Pope, proved himself to be
the right man in the right place.^ But the sneer cast
at our Government was true then, and may still be
true, as it was seventy years ago when first uttered,
"Able men are sure of oflSce when its emoluments
are abolished." Men of science, men devoted to
the best interests of their country, Dalton, Priestley,
Ivory, Young, WoUaston, and Murdoch, to name no
others, were treated with neglect, or considered well

* Macaula/s Works iy. 248.

SCIENCE NEGLECTED IN ENGLAND 97

paid if a Royal Society medal were awarded to them.
Some, like James Watt, had even to save their own
inventions from the grasp of unscrupulous claimants,
who wished to rob them of the fruits of their genius.
The result of this policy of indifference was plain to
all who could see. "In England, whole branches of
Continental discovery are unstudied, and, indeed, almost
unknown, even by name. It is in vain to conceal the
melancholy truth. We are fast dropping behind. In
mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, and
given over a hopeless race. In chemistry the case is
not much better." These were the words of Sir John
Herschel in 1830, fifteen years after the great war
was ended, and could no longer be pleaded as a reason
for our isolation and ignorance. Sir Humphry Davy,
President of the Royal Society, spoke in the same
terms and about the same time. Babbage, the in-
ventor of the wonderful calculating machine, expressed
views equally strong. " In England, particularly with
respect to the more diflicult and abstract sciences, we
are not merely much below other nations of equal rank,
but below several even of inferior power, . . , and
nothing but the full expression of public opinion can
remove the evils that chill the enthusiasm, and cramp
the energies of the science of England." ^ Seventy
years have passed since then, and though it cannot be
said that the ground lost has been all regained, a vast
change for the better has taken place. Public opinion
has been awakened to the danger that threatens the
country from this neglect.

It was long in vain that learned men, loving their

^ Quarterly BevifiW, xliii. 305, ''Reflexions on the Decline of Science
in England, and on some of its Causes."

7

98 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

country, and seeing where one source at least of its
true greatness lay, called attention to our rulers' dis-
regard of education and science. " The return of the
sword to its scabbard" in 1815, says an author who
wrote fifteen years later, " seems to have been the signal
for one universal eflfort to recruit exhausted resources,
to revive industry and civilisation, and to direct to their
proper objects the genius and talent which war had
either exhausted in its service or repressed in its
desolations. In this rivalry of skill, England alone
has hesitated to take a part." France was leading the
way, and was making up the ground it had lost.
" Let us frankly acknowledge the fact," Arago wrote,
"at the time when Herschel was prosecuting his
beautiful observations, there existed in France no
instrument adapted for developing them ; we had not
even the means of verifying them. Fortunately for
the scientific honour of our country, mathematical
analysis is also a powerful instrument. Laplace gave
ample proof of this on a memorable occasion, when
from the retirement of his chamber he predicted, he
minutely announced, what the excellent astronomer
of Windsor would see with the largest telescopes
which were ever constructed by the hand of man."
And he adds, " It is for nations especially to bear in
remembrance the ancient adage, noblesse oblige / " ^

It was not and had not been an uncommon thing
for kings and princes to encourage research, when
George iii. extended his patronage to the toiling
musician of Bath. For two hundred years, at least,
it had been a common thing in Europe — so common,
indeed, that, if Herschel thought of it as a possibility

^ Arago, Biographies, 223, 237.

GALILEO, LEIBNITZ, FRAUNHOFER 99

in his own case, he was justified by what the world
knew of the lives of men of science on the Continent.
He could say, as Galileo said before him, " My private
lectures and domestic pupils are a great hindrance
and interruption to my studies ; I wish to be entirely
exempt from the former, and in great measure from
the latter." Herschel had the same wishes, but not
the same success, for Galileo was relieved of all pro-
fessional duty, except giving lectures on extraordinary
occasions to sovereign princes and other strangers of
distinction. He was honoured with pensions and
rewards from a petty prince in Italy, far superior at
first to what Herschel enjoyed from the bounty of the
wealthiest monarch and the richest country in the
world.

Galileo was only one example out of a multitude.
Leibnitz, the contemporary and rival of Newton, was
another. He was laden with honours and rewards
showered on him from one end of Europe to the other.
He left "a fortune of sixty thousand crowns, which
were found, after his death, accumulated in sacks in
various kinds of specie." Descartes, Euler, the two
Bemoullis, Huyghens, and many more are proofs of
the encouragement ^ven to ^ence by Idngs and
princes. But the example of Fraunhofer, the con-
temporary of Herschel, of DoUond, of WoUaston, first
a common worker, then a great inventor and discoverer,
shows best what George iii. might have done for
Herschel, and what Herschel was justly entitled to
expect from a prince who was twofold his sovereign,
as Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain. Of
Fraunhofer it is said " his own sovereign, Maximilian
Joseph, was his earliest and his latest patron ; and by

917'154A

loo HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

the liberality with which he conferred civil honours
and pecuniary rewards on Joseph Fraunhof er, he has
immortalised his own name and added a new lustre
to the Bavarian crown." The German and other
astronomers, who refused to accept Oeorgium Sidns
as a name for the planet discovered by Herschel, were
right, as things then stood : the King, who then did
so shabbily by the astronomer, deserved neither part
nor lot in the astronomer's heavens ; and the common
sense of mankind gave him none. But the King was
unfairly judged, notwithstanding.

This encouragement of science stood on a different
footing from the degradation of private patronage and
fulsome dedications, to which literature had been
subjected, and from which it had shaken itself free.
But both literature and science were exposed to
another danger than neglect — disparagement and envy
from within their own borders. In the case of
Herschel we have a curious example of what seems
this meanness, written in 1830, eight years after his
death: "Herschel's fame rests on discoveries, for
which he was indebted solely to the great power of
his telescope. That of the planet, sometimes called
by his name, was an accidental discovery, in which
genius had no part, and which could not have been
much longer deferred. He did not, like his illustrious
contemporaries Delambre and Piazzi, distinguish him-
self by the amelioration of the tables, or the reduction
of catalogues of the stars, or by improving methods of
computation, or indeed by any labour of practical
utility. He devoted himself to the observation of
astronomical phenomena, and in this department his
unrivalled telescopes gave him a sort of supremacy.

DISPARAGEMENT OF HERSCHEL loi

His speculations concerning the structure of the
universe-the progressive condensation of nebute and
clusters of stars — the nature of the sun and the
seasons of the planets — occupying a large portion of
the goodly collection of sixty-seven Memoirs, which
he contributed to the Tramaactions of the Royal
Society — are lively and amusing, but they are entirely
useless to astronomy, and have added nothing to the
mass of real knowledge." What an ungenerous,
narrow-minded, unjust criticism ! Most certainly the
man who, by patient effort and ingenious contrivance,
advances the boundaries of human knowledge, if he is
not a genius, deserves something better from his
fellows than thus to be lightly esteemed for long-
continued and successful labours. If Herschel had
done nothing but invent a sounding-line to fathom
the depths of space, and reveal worlds of light in
countless profusion, he would have deserved well of
humanity. The same criticism might have been
passed on Galileo, who, in a letter to a friend, was
proud to say that the Grand Duke "Ferdinand had
been amusing himself with making object-glasses, and
always carried one with him to work it wherever he
went." Herschel, like Galileo and the Grand Duke,
but on a vastly grander scale, was a grinder of mirrors
for telescopes that were the wonder or envy of the
world. And a distinguished man of science in our
own time wrote of Herschel: "The success of this
celebrated astronomer gave birth to a spirit of
observation and inquiry which was before unknown.
The heavens have been explored with the most un-
wearied assiduity, and this laudable zeal for the
advancement of astronomy has been crowned with

I02 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

the discovery of /our Tiew planets,''^ It was thus
not only what Herschel was doing himself, but what
he was inducing others to do.

George iii. would not suffer William Herschel to
return to his profession as organist, teacher of music,
and director of concerts in BatL He was in this guided
by an impulse worthy of the King of a great com-
mercial and earth-exploring country. But for more
than two months Herschel was kept in London and
the neighbourhood, waiting the King's pleasure.
Double the time had elapsed during which he could
be absent from duty without loss of money, but until
he got leave from the King to return home he had to
remain in attendance at Court. Whoever was advis-
ing His Majesty in the matter seems to have acted
with singular want of thought. A Cosmo of Florence,
a King of France, a Queen of Sweden, or an Empress of
Russia would not have kept a man of science, who had
at one bound sprung into greatness, dangling about
the Court so long without providing for his personal
wants. In HerscheFs case it was otherwise, for he
wrote to Bath " several times for a supply of money " !
His friends in that city, loath to lose him, were, and
not without cause, afraid that the offers made to him
were not " very advantageous." They were certainly
not creditable to those concerned. Herschel appears
to have thought so himself, for, to all inquirers, but
Dr. William Watson, his answer was, " that the King
had provided for him."

It was a poor provision, even though no demands
had been made on his time and strength. It was

^ Sir David Brewster in his edition of Ferguson's Astronomy, published
in 1823, the year after Herschel's death, ii. 85,

HONOUR CHEAPLY BOUGHT 103

shabby when the return he had to make was set oflf
against the salary he received. A teacher of elocution,
the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, had enjoyed
a pension of the same amount for about twenty years,
through the influence of Lord Bute, " to enable him to
carry on his literary pursuits." ^ But small though the
allowance was, Herschel preferred the post of Royal
Astronomer at Windsor to the troubles of a teacher's
life at Bath. His friend Dr. Watson, not having yet
forgotten, it may be, the discreditable civil war be-
tween "the sharps" and "the blunts," in which the
King did not figure to advantage, four years before,
only echoed what would have been the general
sentiment of scientific men, had they known, as he
did, the money part of the arrangement, when he
exclaimed, " Never bought monarch honour so cheap ! "
It is far from pleasant to look back on this transaction
or on the one-sided record of it given by Miss Herschel.
Well would it have been had she laid the burden of
blame on advisers, whom apparently she was not
ignorant of. Probably it added to the bitterness
which dropped from her pen, that in the following
year, Pallas, or Mr. Pallas as he was called in this
country, a student of George iil.'s own University of
Gottingen, and a man of science far from equal to
Herschel, got an addition of £200 to his salary in
Russia ! ^ For the transaction, as we have seen, had a
shabbier look than appears on the surface. At least,
as it is represented, so it seems. Herschel was to give
lessons in astronomy to the Princesses of the Royal
Family, when called upon, and to receive the visitors
whom His Majesty might send. This might and did

^ Watkins, Memoirs, etc., i. 104. * Scots Mag., 1786, p. 536.

I04 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

prove a tax upon him, especially if he had been up all
night watching the heavens. Still, it seemed a leaf
taken out of the book of duties laid on Galileo by
Cosmo de Medici, and promised to be both a relaxation
and a pleasure. The same cannot be said of the other
part of Herschers commission. He was at liberty and
he was encouraged to make reflecting telescopes for
sale, as a means of adding to his income. An arrange-
ment so unwise, from the shopkeeping look it wore,
should not have been proposed or sanctioned. It was
a source of profit to the astronomer; but it did not
differ from allowing Herschel to set up a factory for
the manufacture and sale of telescopes with the Royal
arms over the door, and "By appointment Royal
Astronomer to the King'* painted underneath. No
one who reads the language in which Buonaparte
wrote to Laplace not many years after, can be surprised
that, in view of this lowering of science, England
should have been spoken of by him as a nation of
shopkeepers. The King himself became Herschel's
first customer, ordering from him four 10-feet reflectors,
one of which was intended as a present to the
University of Gottingen, which had been founded by
his grandfather, George ii., forty-five years before,
and was then rising into fame. These four reflectors
cost six hundred and forty guineas apiece, and yielded
a handsome profit.^ Othersj less costly, but still re-
munerative, were also ordered. Two hundred guineas

^ This looks like the market price, if we may judge from Short's
charges forty years before. *' After Short had established himself in
London in 1742 he received £630 for a 12-feet reflector from Lord
Thomas Spencer. In 1752 he executed one for the £ing of Spain for
£1200. The King of Denmark offered twelve hundred guineas" for

PRICES OF TELESCOPES 105

was a common price. To be an instrument-maker,
and to sell telescopes, was allowed him by the King ;
but his sister's judgment on these conditions of the
appointment is marked by her usual outspoken
candour. Unfortunately, she presented the business
in the least favourable light for the King, and her
sentiments have been unfairly echoed to his discredit.^
Time so valuable as Herschel's was often absorbed
by idle visitors, who understood little of his work,
and made him no intellectual return. Sometimes a
visit was paid to Slough that came to be remembered
from its surroundings, but from nothing else. Of
these none was more tragic than that of " the Princesse
Lamballe, who came with a numerous attendance to
see the moon, etc. About a fortnight after, her head
was off." 2

another {Lift of N&wUm^ i. 67). In Lalande's Astronomyf vol. i. xlix-
lii, is a prioe-catalogae of astronomical instruments. Short's prices were —

12-inch reflector, 14 guineas.

18

20

24

35

36

75

48

100

72

300

144

800

11
11
a
11
>i

Only one telescope of 12 feet was made by Short. In presenting a 10-
feet reflector to the Society at Gottingen, George in. was following the
example of his grandfather, the founder of the University, who pre-
sented it in 1756 with a mural quadrant of 6-feet radius, made by
Bird (£175), and other instruments.

^ Sir David Brewster goes too far on the other side when he says,
"None of the sovereigns who either preceded or followed him have
an equal claim on the homage of astronomers " {Life of NewUm, i. 60).
This could not be said of the King at first.

' Memoira^ p. 332. This is assigned to 1787, when she was certainly in
England ; but the Princess perished in 1792,

CHAPTER VII

THE GREAT TELESCOPE

There is reason to believe that the discoverer of the
telescope was Roger Bacon, who in the thirteenth
century also invented gunpowder, and was rewarded
with the curses of the Church, the reproaches of his
fellow-friars, and the terror of the ignorant as a
wonder-worker by the aid of evil arts. His discovery
of how to see to a greater distance than the eye can
reach, was a seed that died in the ground, and did not
come to life again till the world was more than three
centuries older. A spectacle-maker of Leyden, Lipper-
shey, working among lenses, as the glasses of spectacles
are called, chanced to place two of them so that, in
looking through, he saw a distant church spire as if it
were close at hand. He made the story public in
1609. Galileo, who happened to be then in Venice,
between which and Holland the East India traffic still
continued, and gave rise to a considerable commerce,
heard the story, probably from some merchant, and,
instead of turning it into ridicule as many would have
done, set himself to find out if he could not do what a
humble spectacle-maker on the other side of Europe
had already done. He was successful. He brought
the moon and the planets so much nearer to the earth
that astronomy took its place among the sciences.

loe

GALILEO'S TELESCOPE: COLOUR 107

Professors, monks, and friars were as bitter revilers of
Galileo as they had been of Roger Bacon. The sleep
of ages of ignorance was so rudely broken by the
magical little tube he put together, that, as they rubbed
their eyes and saw the old world of thought dissolving
out of view, they cursed the disturber of their grave-
yard peace.

Galileo's first telescope magnified three diameters or
nine times : his last magnified thirty-three diameters.
He could not go farther with the glass lenses then in
use. At thirty-eight diameters the colours, developed
in the passage of rays of light through glass, or by
what is called refraction, put an effectual stop to pro-
gress. Newton began where Galileo stopped. He
analysed a beam of sunlight into its component colours
as they are seen in the rainbow, or through a glass
prism. He came to the conclusion that "refraction
could not be produced without colour." He was mis-
taken, and the mistake of a man so eminent led the
whole world astray. Acting on this belief, he argued
that "no improvement could be expected from the
refracting telescope," that is, from an instrument with
a glass or lens at the object end of the tube to form
an eye that collected and focused the rays of light.
Colour, though thus barring the march of advancing
science, really indicated the path of progress. But
nearly two centuries elapsed before the lost road was
regained, and the prism of glass became a more power-
ful factor in revealing the wonders of distant worlds
than the best telescopes. However, progress was not
wholly barred. Colours were not developed by the
reflection of light from a polished surface. If, then, a
highly polished mirror were placed in the bottom of a

io8 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

tube, open at the other end, the rays of light could be
brought to a focus and directed to an eye-piece, where
an observer, with his back to the object, it might be,
could see it clearly and distinctly magnified. The
mirror required to be of a parabolic form, and might
be made of metal or of glass. Newton chose an alloy
of tin and copper for the mirror or speculum, but he
did not trouble himself about grinding it into the form
of a parabola. The second reflecting telescope he made
magnified thirty-eight diameters, and was presented to
the Royal Society in 1671. Half a century passed
before any farther step was taken with either refract-
ing or reflecting telescope. Hadley, the inventor of
the sextant, then took the matter up. In 1723 he
made one on Newton's pattern, with a mirror of
6 inches aperture, and a focal length of 62f inches. Its
eye-pieces magnified up to 230 diametera A report on
it was made to the Royal Society, of which the sub-
stance was that Newton's telescope " had lain neglected
these fifty years," but Hadley had shown " that this
noble invention does not consist in bare theory."
Strange to say, in that very year an English gentle-
man had made a refracting telescope, which largely
overcame the difficulties arising from colour. His wa^
the first achromatic or colourless telescope : it remained
the only one for another fifty years. Although its
inventor lived all that time, he neither claimed first
honours nor interfered with the patent of the second
discoverer, DoUond.

Another half-century thus passed, and little or

nothing had been done. Dollond had rediscovered in

1 1758 the method of counteracting colour in glass

lenses, but no one seemed disposed to apply the prin-

REFRACTORS— ACHROMATIC 109

ciple on a large scale. Apparently the way here also
was barred against progress. All attempts to manu-
f actare discs of pure flint glass larger than seven inches
in diameter failed. Up to that point the achromatic
refracting telescope was a great success. For seventy
years good specimens of considerable size were exceed-
ingly rare, and even in 1830 a disc of eleven inches and
seven-tenths in diameter cost £1000.^ An obscure
musician, considering it probably impracticable to ex-
tend the range of DoUond's telescope, or impressed by
the name and authority of Newton, was amusing him-
self, in 1772, if hard and continuous work can be called
amusement, with casting and grinding mirrors, with
mounting telescopes, and with studying the heavens in
Bath, the gayest and idlest city in England. The
people who formed the Literary Society of the town,
who met to read papers on scientific subjects, and some
of whom were members of the Royal Society of London,
did not even know him. They were pigmies ; a giant
was among them, of whose existence and works they
were not aware.

The courage of this musician was extraordinary. In
the very year in which he removed to Bath, Messier,
an eminent French astronomer, warned the Royal
Society of London that progress in astronomy could
be hoped for only from refractors. His words are :
"It were to be wished that astronomers might be
accommodated with achromatic telescopes of the most
perfect construction, as such are the only instruments
whereby a great knowledge of the celestial bodies can

^ Herschel sometimes used a 3jf-feet achromatic or refracting tele-
scope and a single eye-lens to confirm apparently the evidence of his
20-feet or 7-feet reflectors.

no HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

be acquired." Herschel cannot well be supposed to
have been ignorant of this scientific faith. With the
modest boldness of true genius he not only set it aside,
but he proved it was entirely wrong. This was at the
very beginning of his career. A novice challenged the
accuracy of an eminent master and veteran in the art !
A novice compelling a veteran to withdraw his pro-
phecies and confess himself in error ! Why he thus
set aside the refractor and boldly followed to un-
imagined ends the path of improvement for Newton's
reflector he has not told us. Both ways were open ;
he had perhaps tried both, for he was aware of both ;
but he preferred the latter.

While still engaged as musical director and teacher
at Bath, Herschel formed the design of constructing
a 30-feet reflector with a 3-feet mirror. This was
about the year 1778, before he was even known to
the upper classes of citizens or visitors as an amateur
astronomer. The first mirror of this kiCd which he
cast cracked in the cooling. When preparing for a
second casting, the furnace, which he had built on pur-
pose in his own house, gave way, the molten metal
ran into the fire, overflowed the stone floor, and nearly
cost him his life. But his papers in the Philosophical
Transactions were making him known, and his dis-
covery of the planet Uranus brought him to the
King's notice, and put a stop for a time to the realisa-
tion of his cherished idea of a great telescope. From
the first he was bent on doing what no other had done
before him — carrying out Newton's conception of a
great reflector, whether the mirror used were glass or
metal, and exploring the heavens with an instrument
such as the mind of man had never before imagined.

PROPHECY OF HERSCHEL iii

He conceived the idea of a 40-feet reflector, with a
4-feet mirror at the bottom of the tube, cast and
polished by himself. His own account of the begin-
ning of this magnificent work is this : " In the year
1783 I finished a very good 20-feet reflector with a
large aperture, and mounted it upon the plan of my
present telescope. After two years' observation with
it, the great advantage of such apertures appeared so
clearly to me, that I recurred to my former intention
of increasing them still farther ; and being now suffi-
ciently provided with experience in the work I wished
to undertake, the President of our Royal Society, who
is always ready to promote useful undertakings, had
the goodness to lay my design before the King. His
Majesty was graciously pleased to approve of it, and
with his usual liberality to support it with his Royal
bounty." There is this to be said on the departure
now made, that the great telescope, from the difficulty
of handling it, cannot be considered to have altogether
answered his expectations, for the 20-feet continued
to be his favourite in studying the heavens. But he
was full of hope. " By applying ourselves," he wrote
in April 1784, " with all our powers to the improve-
ment of telescopes, which I look upon as yet in their
infant state, and turning them with assiduity to the
study of the heavens, we shall in time obtain some faint
knowledge of, and perhaps be able partly to delineate,
The Interior Conetruction of the Universe,*'

Herschel himself devised and superintended every-
thing about this great telescope. None but " common
workmen " were employed, agi was also the case with
the greater reflector built by Lord Rosse, sixty years
later. The woodwork of the stand, and machines for

112 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

giving the required motions up or down, right or left,
were designed, drawn, and overlooked by him in
their minutest details. Not a screw bolt was put in —
and nothing else was used to obviate the effects of
damp getting a lodgment in the woodwork — without
his own eye watching or directing the work. The
casting of the great mirror was begun while the
building of the stand was thus proceeding. He had to
remove froni Datchet to Clay Hall, and thence, in 1786,
to Slough, before the mirror was finished, but apparatus
and materials were all transferred from the one house
to the other without delaying the work. So rapidly
had the work been pushed forward that the stand was
ready, and the mirror, " highly polished," was put in
the tube in less than a year and a half. " I had the
first view through it," Herschel writes, " on Feb. 19,
1787." It was not satisfactory. "By a mismanage-
ment of the person who cast it, it came out thinner
on the centre of the back than was intended, and on
account of its weakness would not permit a good
figure to be given to it." Twelve or fourteen men had
been daily employed in grinding or polishing it by
hand, for machinery did not come into use for this
purpose till 1788. It was labour lost. The work had
to be begun anew, and a second mirror was cast Jan.
26, 1788, nearly a twelvemonth after the first peep
into the other. Fatality again ! " It cracked in cool-
ing." Three weeks after it wjis recast, and by Oct. 24
it was brought tp such " a figure and polish " that he
tried it on the planet Saturn. He was so dissatisfied
with the result that he " continued to work upon it
till Aug. 27, 1789, when it was tried upon the fixed
stars, and found to give a pretty sharp image,"

DISCOVERY OF SATELLITE OF SATURN 1 1 3

although " large stars were a little affected with
scattered light, owing to many remaining scratches
in the mirror."

Four years of hard thinking and continuous labour,
of battles with not very intelligent workmen, some-
times forty in nupoiber, and of disappointment with
himself, if not also with grumbling from his sister
Caroline, ended at last. A triumphant tone may be
heard in the words which conclude his short history of
the progress of the work. They are : —

"Aug. the 28th, 1789.— Having brought the tele-
scope to the parallel of Saturn, I discovered a sixth
satellite of that planet, and also saw the spots upon
Saturn better than I had ever seen them before, so
that I may date the finishing of the 40- feet telescope
from that time."

Herschel could now take stock of the " contents of
the heavens " as he had never been able to do before.
High above the ground, while the tube was coated
with ice in winter, or running with streams of
moisture in summer, he could dictate through speaking-
tubes what his sister was to write down, or how the
assistant was to move the telescope. Seated in a little
house far below, his sister watched the clock, and
entered remarks and measurements with an accuracy
and zeal no other assistant could have equalled or sur-
passed. Brother and sister were in a position to carry
out great ideas, and to put into living shape vast
imaginations of genius.

The cost of this telescope was far more than

Herschel could be expected to meet. Fortunately, the

advisers of the King were more reasonable men than

those who considered £200 a year remuneration enough

8

114 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

for the Royal Astronomer. Chief among them was the
Maecenas of science in those days, Sir Joseph Banks,
the companion of Cook, and the President of the
Royal Society. Owing to his representations, the King
allowed his astronomer £2000 for the construction of
the telescope, and afterwards £2000 more to complete
it, with £200 a year for necessary repairs, painting,
ropes, etc., and men's wages, and £50 a year of pension
for Caroline. When Caroline Herschel records these
handsome allowances from the King, she expresses no
thankfulness, though her own personal expenses for
seven years previous had not amounted to more than
£8 a year! But she had cause to complain. "I
never felt satisfied," she writes in 1827, " with the
support your father received towards his under-
takings, and far less with the ungracious manner
in which it was granted. For the last sum came with
a message that more must never be asked for." One
of the requests was a small salary for her as assistant
to her brother. The sum granted was £50 a year.
For nine quarters it was left unpaid ! It is perhaps
matter of regret that she wrote as she did of the
shabbiness of the pension allowed to her brother. She
did the King a grave injustice. And she forgot,
besides, that while the King paid £4000 for the tele-
scope,^ and allowed £200 a year for upkeep and wages,
the instrument remained her brother's private pro-
perty. William Herschel shows no trace of the
grumbling, cynical spirit of his sister. He knew
how handsomely he had been treated. At the same
time there is a most amusing raciness about her view

1 Letter from Sir John Herschel, March 13, 1847 : Weld's History of
the HoycU Society, ii. 193,

DIFFICULTIES WITH WORKPEOPLE 115

of the building of this grand instrument, which it
would be a mistake to overlook.

Caroline Herschel had difficulties with servants from
her earliest days of housekeeping. No one pleased her ;
whether because, having been intended for a household
drudge herself by her mother and her brother Jacob,
she was too exacting when it came to her turn to lord
it over others, or from the ignorance and disregard to
right of the class servants were drawn from, we cannot
telL But her account of the workmen whom her
brother employed on the great telescope paints the
employed of those days in colours more black, and
more incredible, than we are warranted in receiving
without scruple. For some weeks in the summer of 1 786
she was left in charge at Slough, while her brother was
absent in Hanover on a scientific mission from the
King, charged in fact with conveying to the University
of Gottingen a 10-feet reflector, constructed by Her-
schel, and presented by the King for the Observatory,
which had already taken high rank in Europe. " There
were no less than thirty or forty of my brother's work-
people," she writes, "at work for upwards of three
months together, some employed in felling and rooting
out trees, some digging and preparing the ground for
the bricklayers who were laying the foundation for the
telescope, and the carpenter in Slough, with all his
men. The smith, meanwhile, was converting a wash-
house into a forge, and manufacturing complete sets
of tools for the work he was to enter on. . . . In short,
the place was a complete workshop for making optical
instruments, and it was a pleasure to go into it to see
how attentively the men listened to and executed their
master's orders."

ii6 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

This is one and a pleasingly picturesque side of the
medal, that might have been struck to commemorate
the building of the great reflector. But another and
an almost incredible other side is presented on the
same page of her Memoirs. " I cannot leave this
subject," she says, "without regretting, even twenty
years after, that so much labour and expense should
have been thrown away on a swarm of pilfering work-
people, both men and women, with which Slough, I
believe, was particularly infested. For at last every-
thing that could be carried away was gone, and nothing
but rubbish left. Even tables for the use of work-
rooms vanished : one in particular I remember, the
drawer of which was filled with slips of experiments
made on the rays of light and heat, was lost out
of the room in which the women had been ironing.
... It required my utmost exertion to rescue the
manuscripts in hand from destruction by falling into
unhallowed hands or being devoured by mice." A
nest of savage South Sea islanders, lifting whatever
they could carry away from a house within two or
three miles of Windsor Castle in the end of last cen-
tury may be an accurate picture of the ways and
manners of English workpeople then, but it is
pardonable to receive it with a smile of incredulity,
and to imagine other reasons for the alleged pil- '
fering.

Servants seem to have been a cross which Caroline
Herschel never could bear with an equal mind. In
1831, when she was eighty-one, she was as hard to
satisfy as in 1772, when she was only twenty- two:
" The first thing my radical servant did when she came
to me was to break the bottle containing the ink of my

HERSCHEUS INGENUITY 117

own making, which was to have lasted me all my life-
time." ^

The ingenuity of the appliances for ensuring stability
and lightening labour in consulting the telescope was a
monument to the mechanical genius of Herschel, in
keeping with the greatness of the mirror. These
appliances are now things of the past, not to be re-
peated by any future adventurer in the fields of
research, but none the less worthy of respectful regard
even in this age of engineers. They were not successful
in making a cumbrous machine so light and easy to
handle as science required, but that is only saying that
the necessity for this preceded the discovery of the
means of doing it, and that the first attempts were
inferior to those made later. The iron tube, at the
bottom of which lay the colossal eye that looked
heavenwards, was 39 feet 4 inches in length and 4 feet
10 inches in diameter. It was an unwieldy and far
from necessary addition to the structure, enough to
cause error in observations by its ton-weight and
instability. He had also to make arrangements for
conveying observers and visitors from the ground to
the gallery, 30 feet high or more, to whom ladders
would have been difficult or dangerous. A chair-lift
was devised, but was never erected. So easy did he
find the ladders, and such was his agility at sixty and
seventy years of age, that he preferred to reach or
leave his post of observation by running up or down
them. Among other requirements was a means of
communicating readily and at once from his lofty
perch both with the recorder of observations, whose

* March 1831, Menrnrs, p. 244. Compare this with the ** hot-headed
old Welshwoman" of 1772, p. 83.

ii8 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

duty was, under cover of a roof, to watch the clock,
and to enter the measurements or remarks of the
observer, as well as with the workman in attendance.
A " speaking-pipe," as it was then called, of variable
length to suit changes in his position, but 115 feet long
at the most, was devised and fitted up. Usually his
sister Caroline was the recorder who did the work, all-
night work at times.

The mechanical skill shown in the construction of
the telescope was proved sixty years after by Herschel's
distinguished son. Sir John, in a letter already re-
ferred to, dated March 13, 1847 : " The woodwork of
the telescope being so far decayed as to be dangerous,
in the year 1839, 1 pulled it down (the operation com-
menced on December 5), and having cleared away the
framework, etc., piers were erected on which the tube
was placed, that being of iron, and so well preserved,
that although not more than one-twentieth of an inch
thick, when in the horizontal position it sustained
within it all my family, and continues to sustain
enclosed within it to this day, not only the heavier of
the two reflectors, but also all the more important
portions of the machinery, such as being of iron and
brass stood in no fear of decay, as well as all such
portions of the polishing apparatus as would go into it,
to the amount, I presume, of a great many tons, which
had, when I last saw it, produced no sign of weakness
or sagging down. This great strength and resistance
to decay is to be attributed to the peculiar prin-
ciple of its internal structure, which is, in effect, very
similar to that for which, in later times, a patent
has been taken out under the name of Corrugated
Iron Roofing, etc., but of which the idea was, I

ACCIDENTS IN WORKING 119

have every reason to believe, original with my father
at the time of its construction; as was, I am dis-
posed to think, also the syatem of triangular
arraTigement adopted in the woodwork, being a
perfect system of 'diagonal bracing,' or rather that
principle to which the 'diagonal bracing' system
owes its strength.

"The other mirror and the rest of the polishing
apparatus are on the premises, but in a situation
adapted only for preservation, and neither for use nor
inspection. The iron grinding tools and polishers are
placed underneath the tube, let into the ground, and
level with the surface of the gravelled area in which it
stands." ^

The duty of attending to machinery and mirrors, in
an observatory such as Herschel's, was not free from
danger. Even visitors had to take the risk of an
accident in satisfying their curiosity. Piazzi of Pal-
ermo, the discoverer of the first asteroid, " did not go
home without getting broken shins," Caroline writes.
And she adds, "I could give a pretty long list of
accidents which were near proving fatal to my brother
as well as myself." ^ One of these accidents she does
record. It was on December 31, 1783 : "The evening
had been cloudy, but about ten o'clock a few stars
became visible, and in the greatest hurry all was got
ready for observing. My brother, at the front of the
telescope, directed me to make some alteration in the
lateral motion, which was done by machinery, on which
the point of support of the tube and mirror rested. At
each end of the machine or trough was an iron hook,

^ Weld, History f etc., ii. 193.
^ See especially, MemairSf p. 168.

120 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

such as butchers use for hanging their joints upon, and
having to run in the dark on ground covered a foot
deep with melting snow, I fell on one of these hooks,
which entered my right leg above the knee. My
brother's call, ' Make haste ! ' I could only answer by
a pitiful cry, 'I am hooked!' He and the work-
men were instantly with me, but they could not lift
me without leaving two ounces of my flesh behind.
... At the end of six weeks I began to have some
fears about my poor limb. ... I had, however, the
comfort to know that my brother was no loser through
this accident, for the remainder of the night was
cloudy." The compensation she urges, in extenuation
of the accident, by its drollery almost makes us forget
its gravity. Once also when her " brother was elevated
fifteen feet or more on a temporary cross-beam instead
of a safe gallery," a very high wind so shook the
apparatus that "he had hardly touched the ground
before the whole of it came down." If accidents so
serious happened before the heavier and more cumbrous
machinery of the 40-feet telescope was erected, we
may be certain that Herschel's mechanical skill did not
avail to prevent them in the working of the great
telescope.

If Herschel had done nothing more for science than
build this great telescope he would have amply earned
the high eulogium graven on his tombstone at Upton,
" The barriers of the heavens he broke through, penetrat-
ing as well as exploring their more remote spacea"
Nothing to compare with it had been seen before. It
was a wonder that the gravest man of science regarded
with deepest admiration, and children at school looked
on with awe in the pictures of it seen on the pages of

VALUE OF THE GREAT TELESCOPE 121

books they read. But the spirit of a wholesome
rivalry, which it awoke in many bosoms, did more for
astronomy than its builder or it ever did. It was the
origin of other instruments of the same kind, as grand
as itself or even grander. Some men of science,
waspishly inclined perhaps, denounced the great
telescope as of no use. Both in England and on
the Continent this was said, and most unfairly, as
everyone who reads Herschel's papers may discover
for himself. He has frankly and fully explained in
his writings ^ why he preferred to use other and smaller
telescopes, and perhaps to use them oftener, but his
love for and his pride in this work of his hands is ever
and again coming to the front. One instance alone
deserves to be quoted as a specimen : " I saw the
fourth sateUite and the ring of Saturn in the 40-f eet
speculum without an eye-glass." ^

But it WEW3 seldom that astronomers on the Con-
tinent followed the example of William Herschel or
gave themselves the trouble he took. Some of them
did. Of " Professor Amici, an artist and a man of
science of the first rank," his son. Sir John Her-
schel, writes: "He is the only man who has, since
my father, bestowed great pains on the construction of
specula, and his 10-foot telescopes with 12-inch mirrors
are of very extraordinary perfection." This was
true at the time it was written, two years after his
father's death. It did not remain true, for Lord Eosse's
great 6-feet mirror and 56-feet tube had still to
come. And like Herschel, Lord Rosse was his own
workman. When visiting him at Birr Castle in 1862,

^ Phil, Trans,, 1815, p. 296.

^PhU, Trans., 1791, p. 76 (October 10).

122 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

Nassau Senior relates that "the smaller speculum of
the great telescope had been broken, and no one except
Lord Bosse himself could polish it, which he had not
yet had time to do ; but we have been able to use the
3-f eet reflector." ^ The necessity of this personal
labour from the owner himself, hard manual labour,
was one great drawback to the value of these magnifi-
cent instruments.

Kings and princes and men of science paid handsome
sums to Herschel for telescopes made by his own hand.
While the great telescope was in progress, George iii.
presented the Observatory of Gottingen with a reflector,
which Herschel took to Hanover along with his brother.
He also ordered other 10-feet for himself, and many
7-feet besides had been bespoke; but the finest and
costliest was one for the King of Spain, ordered in 1796
and not sent off till October 1801. It cost £3150.
Other two for the Prince of Canino brought £2310.
But this was telescope-selling, not star-observing. It
cost time and trouble, that might have been devoted to
better purpose. No wonder that his sister grumbled.
She was hindered in her proper work by the packing
of the Spanish reflector, " which was done at the bam
and rickyard at Upton, her room being all the while
filled with the optical apparatus." ^ It was small satis-
faction to her that the University of Edinburgh con-
ferred the degree of LL.D. on her brother in 1786. She
did not consider that reward at all equal to his merits.
She echoed the words of General Komarzewski, spoken
by him probably in fun, but received by her in earnest,
that Herschel should be honoured as the Duke of

^ JoumdlSf etc,, relating to Ireland^ ii. 247.
* Memoirs, p. 110.

A WALK THROUGH THE TUBE 123

Slough. He did not even get a knighthood from his
Royal patron. In 1816 he was made a Hanoverian
Ejiight by the Prince Regent; traders, slave-holders,
moneyed men of all classes were raised to the pelage,
but brain power was then less esteemed for the besllowal
of worldly rank.

Before the tube was fitted with the great mirror,
many of the visitors who flocked to see William
Herschel had the curiosity to walk through it.
Among them was the King. Close behind him was
the Archbishop of Canterbury, who found it diflScult
to proceed, till the King turned to give him his hand,
saying, *' Come, my Lord Bishop, I will show you the
way to heaven."

An invitation from Mr. Herschel to walk through
the tube, as it lay on the ground, was not uncommon.
Miss Bumey and the party she was with accepted the
invitation. " It held me quite upright," she says, "and
without the least inconvenience; so would it have
done had I been dressed in feathers and a bell hoop —
such is its circumference. Mr. Smelt led the way,
walking also upright ; and my father followed. After
we were gone, the Bishop [of Worcester] and Dr.
Douglas were tempted, for its oddity, to make the
same promenade."^ Evidently the Church was not
disposed, in those days at least, to look Heaven in the
face.

While the greater tube of Lord Rosse's telescope
was lying in readiness to receive its greater mirror,
visitors were also in the habit of walking through
it, sixty years later. The Dean of Ely, a well-known
mathematician, and a man of more than the common

^ LeUers, iii. 262.

124 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

height, is said to have walked through with his
umbrella up. The days of these gigantic tubes are
past. The career of Herschel's 40-feet was inaugur-
ated by a concert held within the tube, just as
its end was celebrated half a century afterwards.
" ' God save the King ' was sung in it by the whole
company, who got up from dinner, and went into
the tube, among the rest two Misses Stow, the one a
famous pianoforte player, some of the Griesbachs, who
accompanied on the oboe, or any instrument they
could get hold of, and I," Caroline in her ninetieth
year continues, " you will easily imagine, was one of
the nimblest and foremost to get in and out of the
tube. But now ! — lack-a-day ! — I can hardly cross
the room without help." She was then a giddy girl
of only thirty-seven 1 But when the concert was held
in the tube at the end of the great telescope's career,
she was in Hanover, never destined again to see the
noble work of her "best and dearest of brothers."

On the return of Sir John Herschel from South
Africa in 1838, it was found that the woodwork of
the great telescope was so decayed that the structure
was dangerous. It had stood exposed to wind and
weather for more than fifty years, and the discovery
of its unsafe condition was made on the centenary of
the builder's birth. In the following year it was taken
down, and on New Year's Eve^ a meeting of the
Herschel family was held within the iron tube, then
lowered on the ground, to celebrate the end of the
instrument. Sir John's ballad was sung that night,
and is now preserved as a printed broadside among

^ Said in the Memoirs to have been at Ohristmas (p. 810). Different
in Arago, Biographies, 171.

REQUIEM OF THE GREAT TELESCOPE 125

other relics of a famous past in the Royal Observatory
at Greenwich.

The Herschelian Telescope Song^

Kequiem of the Forty-feet Reflector at Slough, to be sung on the
New Year's Eve, 1839-40, by Papa, Mama, Madame, and all
the Little Bodies in the tube thereof assembled : —

In the old Telescope's tube we sit,

And the shades of the past around us flit;

His requiem sing we, with shout and with din.

While the old year goes out and the new one comes in.

ChoTUi of Youths and Virgins,

Merrily, merrily, let us all sing.

And make the old Telescope rattle and ring.

Full fifty years did he laugh at the storm,
And the blast could not shake his majestic form ;
Now prone he lies where he once stood high,
And searched the deep heavens with his broad bright eye.
MeiTily, merrily, &c.

There are wonders no living wight hath seen.
Which within this hollow have pictured been ;
Which mortal record can ne'er recall,
And are known to Him only who makes them all.
Merrily, merrily, &c.

Here watched our father the wintry Night,
And hiB gaze hath been fed with pre- Adamite light ;
While planets above him in mystic' dance
Sent down on his toils a propitious glance.
Merrily, merrily, &c.

1 Weld, History of the Royal Society ^ ii. 196.
' ? circular.

126 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

He has stretched him quietly down at length,
To bask in the starlight his giant strength ;
And Time shall here a tough ^ morsel find.
For his steel-devouring teeth to grind.
Merrily, merrily, &c.

He will grind it at last, as grind it he must,
And its brass and its iron shall be clay and dust;
But scathless ages^ shall roll away.
And nurture its frame in its form's decay.
Merrily, merrily, &c

A new year dawns and the old year's past,
God send us a happy one like the last,
A little more sun and a little less rain.
To save us from cough and rheumatic pain.
Merrily, merrily, &c.

God grant that its end this group may find
In love and in harmony fondly joined ;
And that some of us fifty years hence, once more,
May make the old Telescope's echoes roar.

Chorus, fortissimo.

Merrily, merrily, let us all sing.

And make the old Telescope rattle and ring.

Where the great telescope raised its eye heaven-
ward, a church has been built to direct men's thoughts
to do what brother and sister long did in loving
fellowship, "mind the heavens." It was a fitting
consecration of the hallowed ground. In speaking of
his magnificent work in 1813, Herschel said to Thomas
Campbell the poet, " with an air, not of the least pride,
but with a greatness and simplicity of expression that
struck me with wonder, 'I have looked farther into

? rough, ' ? rays.

THE REFRACTOR AT DORPAT 127

space than ever human being did before me. I have
observed stars, of which the light takes two miUiona
of years to travel to this globe/ " The Church is a
telescope that looks, or should look, even farther into
space and time.

While Herschel was giving life and power to the
reflecting telescope, DoUond's followers in this country
and Fraunhofer in Germany were restoring the re-
fractor to the place from which it had been deposed.
In 1825 the finest refractor that, up to that time, the
world had ever seen was erected for Struve at the
expense of the Russian Government in Dorpat. The
tube was 13 feet in length, and the object-glass was
9 Paris inches in diameter. The weight of the
whole was about 3000 Russian pounda Of his first
look through it Struve says: "I stood astonished
before this beautiful instrument, undetermined which
to admire most, the beauty and elegance of the work-
manship in its most minute parts, the propriety of its
construction, the ingenious mechanism for moving it, or
the incomparable optical power of the telescope, and
the precision with which objects are defined" ^ He
was proud of his assistant. He believed it to be the
equal of Herschels 40-f eet reflector, and it was certainly
far more easy to work. With its help he continued
the work Herschel began. It appears, however, that
Herschel sometimes used a parabolical glass mirror of
7-f eet focal length instead of the metal mirror,^ avoiding
by reflection the colours due to refraction. This
should be remembered to his credit.

* Astronom, Trans, il 94, 2 pj^^^ Trans, for 1303, p. 228,

CHAPTER VIII

"THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE HEAVENS"^

The writer who described Herschers papers as " lively
and amusing " may have intended a sneer, but he did
a great wrong to inquiries and facts 843 novel as they
were inspiring. Whatever helps to lift man's thoughts
above the littlenesses of life and time is a distinct gain
to the human race, altogether irrespective of the uses
to which, in course of time, it may be applied.
Herschel's papers on The Construction of the Heavens
were of this nature. They were among the first he
wrote ; they were also among the last. He wrote at
least • eight papers on the subject, covering three
hundred and thirty quarto pages: he began the
series in 1784, he finished it in 1818, and he left
the work as a legacy to his son, who nobly honoured
his father's memory by doing for the southern hemi-
sphere what the father did for the northern. Even
though these labours had been nothing more than an
attempt on man's part to penetrate the workshop of

1 This is Herschel's own phrase, taken probably from the notice of
Tiolemy' a Almagest (145 a.d.) in Lalande's Agronomy (1771 a.d.),
where its title is given in Latin, Magna Constructio (i. 156). The
phrase does not deserve the condemnation it received from an Edin-
burgh Reviewer in January 1803 ; but a later Reviewer accepts it in
July 1848, '*to use a phrase which Sir W. Herschel introduced"
(p. 105). *' Introduced " is scarcely correct.

128

FIXED STAR A MISNOMER 129

nature and ascertain the hidden processes of an
Almighty Worker, they would have been invaluable
as a serviceable hypothesis for future efforts. Boldly
and with all reverence, he set himself to open the
closed hand of Almighty Wisdom, and find what that
Power had kept hid. Others laboured in this cause
before him, but " we are indebted solely to the genius
and industry of Dr. Herschel for perfecting their
sagacious views, and supporting them by a body of
evidence amounting nearly to demonstration."^

The first point he laid down was that there is
ample reason "strongly to suspect that there is not,
in strictness of speaking, one fixed star in the
heavens." Fixed stars is a name we have been led
to use, because, unlike the planets or wanderers,
they seem never to change their places in the sky;
but absolute rest in any one of these stars is im-
possible except, it may be, as a result of nicely
balanced forces. Herschel was beginning in 1783 a.d.
at the same starting-point as the famous Hipparchus
nearly two thousand years before, who "observed a
new star which appeared in his own day, and which
led him to believe that the same thing might happen
frequently, and that the stars considered fixed might
be in motion." * The proper motion, as it is called, of
some of the brightest stars was suspected nearly a
century before Herschel's time and was afterwards
fully proved. What the nature of that motion may
be, might be guessed by astronomers, but was really

^ Sir David Brewster in his edition of Ferguson's Astronomy (1823),
iL 298. He is referring specially to nebulae, of which Herschel ** observed
the position, magnitude, and structure of no fewer than 2500,"

» Lalande, i. 152 ; Pliny, u. 26.

9

I30 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

a fruitful field for genius and perseverance to culti-
vate. "Its causes and laws are hid for the present
in almost equal obscurity," was the judgment of Dr.
Maskelyne, then Astronomer-Royal ; but it pointed to
changes among the stars, which a shrewd observer
would endeavour to ascertain and account for.
Herschel undertook the work. Availing himself of a
catalogue of 2884 stars published in 1723 by Flam-
steed, the first Astronomer-Royal, he compared the
heavens of his own day with the appearance they
presented then. He had no star charts such as
astronomers have since constructed, and which, when
compared with a revised edition a century hence, may
reveal much that is at present dark regarding the
motions and destiny of the small but beautiful home
of our shortlived race. He had no photographic
plates to expose or consult. From beginning to end
it was eye-labour and hand-labour with this intrepid
traveller among these far-away suns. So laborious
was the comparison that he had "many a night, in
the course of eleven or twelve hours of observation,
carefully and singly examined not less than 400
celestial objects, besides taking measures of angles
and positions of some of them with proper micro-
meters, and sometimes viewing a particular star for
half an hour together, with all the various powers of
his telescope." During that interval of sixty years he
found that stars had been lost or had vanished, that
they had undergone some capital change of position or
magnitude, or had come into sight where they were
not previously seen, although " it is not easy to prove
a star to be newly come" into any part of the sky.
If a star suddenly shone out so as to attract the eyes

VARIABLE AND LOST STARS 131

of the common people, where a practised observer was
sure there was no star visible an hour or two before,
was he to conclude that it had flared up as if it were
on fire, and that it would go out as the fire died down ?
Or, if he saw a star brightening, paling, going out, and
brightening again every three or four days, or weeks
or months, or every three or four years, was he to
infer that dark bodies of vast size were thrusting
themselves between that distant sun and our eyes,
eclipsing it, in fact; or that immense reaches of un-
lighted space, or dark regions on its surface, were
turned for a time towards us, as it revolved on its
axis? Dark spots on a sunny star's surface and a
rotation more or less rapid were the causes accepted
by Herschel from previous astronomers for this change
of brightness in what are called changing or variable
stars. He examined seven that were then known.
Their periods were 3, 5, 6, 7, 331, 394, and 497 days.^
He felt, however, that his views were discredited by
the sudden bound from 7 days to 331. Unless a star
were found bridging the gulf between these two, he
would not have had confidence to give his theory to
the world. But the star a Herculis seemed to him
to bridge the gap, and satisfy the theory. Its period
was found to be about 60 days. These and other
changes on the face of the heavens, known for many
years and registered in books, formed Herschel's pre-
lude to the work he had set his heart on, The Con-
atruction of the Heavens. That they are a building,
a wonderful temple consecrated to Almighty Power
and Wisdom, he never doubted. To discover the plan

^ Phil. Trans. (1796), pp. 456-56. Professor Holden gives the
numbers as 8, 5, 6, 7, 884, 404, and 494 (p. 183).

132 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

on which the All- wise Worker proceeded was his aim
and ambition.

Stars had been seen by Flamsteed which Herschel
could no longer find. A century had elapsed, and
Herschel put these stars down as " lost." He meant
that a star thus noted was not to be seen when he
looked for it, " but that possibly at some future time,
if it be a changeable or periodical star, it may come to
be visible again." In other cases he entered in his
journal the remark, " Does not exist," when Flamsteed
had not himself seen the star. Herschel, however,
does not appear to have considered that these "lost
stars" may have been comets, or wanderers like his
own Uranus, or specks like the numerous body of
asteroids and satellites, that were then undiscovered.
In a paper written at a later period he found that
he had treated as faultless a catalogue of stars which
required correction. His conclusions regarding lost
or changing stars were thus premature. But neither
the poetic beauty nor the possibility of a " lost " star
can be denied. Perhaps he was only borrowing a
phrase that was used nearly two thousand years
earlier by Hipparchus, who, by his catalogue of the
fixed stars, gave future generations the means of
ascertaining " if stars could be lost and reappear, if
they changed their place, their size, their brightness."

Dissatisfied with the principles on which stars
visible to the naked eye are classed, according to
their brightness, as stars of the first, or second down
to the sixth magnitude, he began, about 1782, to
adopt a new and more effective but certainly a very
laborious method of settling degrees of brightness
among the stars, and of determining to what extent

SUNS IN YOUTH AND OLD AGE 133

the brightness changed from year to year, or from
age to age. By this method actual inspection would
at once decide whether a star was increasing or
diminishing in brightness compared with other stars.
It was an attempt to ascertain the advance of life
or the vigour of youth, the beginnings of decay or
the promise of a long continuance of brightness
among the countless suns in creation. Of the import-
ance of these investigations he entertained no doubt,
nor should we. " The great number of alterations of
stars that we are certain have happened within the
last two centuries, and the much greater number
that we have reason to suspect to have taken place,"
are curious features in the history of the heavens,
as curious as the slow wearing away of the landmarks
of our earth on mountains, on river banks, on ocean
shores. "If we consider how little attention has
formerly been paid to this subject," he goes on to
say, " and that most of the observations we have
are of a very late date, it would perhaps not appear
extraordinary were we to admit the number of
alterations, that have probably happened to different
stars, to be a hundred ; this compared with the number
of stars that have been examined, with a view to
ascertain their changes, which we can hardly rate
at three thousand,^ will give us a proportion of 1 to

^ The most ancient catalogue of the stars is that of Ptolemy (140 a.d.)
of Alexandria, which was probably a revised transcript of that of
Hipparchns (160 B.O.)* It contains 1022 stars. Tycho's catalogue
(1572 A.D.) contains 777 principal stars, to which Kepler afterwards
added 280, taken probably from Tycho's own manuscripts. Hevelius
(1690 A.i>.) published a catalogue containing 950 stars of former lists,
603 observed by himself, and 377 southern stars observed by Halley
from Saint Helena. * ' But the most perfect and the largest catalogue

134 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

30 . . . even 1 to 300 is suflSciently striking to
draw our attention." These were the words of a
wise observer, uttered long before geologists had
begun to use similar language in their own researches.
The conclusion which Herschel drew from these
alterations, real or imagined, in the light of the stars
was that they will "much lessen the confidence we
have hitherto placed upon the permanency of the equal
emission of light of our sun. Many phenomena in
natural history seem to point out some past changes
in our climates. Perhaps the easiest way of account-
ing for them may be to surmise that our sun has been
formerly sometimes more and sometimes less bright than
it is at present. At all events it will be highly pre-
sumptuous to lay any great stress upon the stability of
the present order of things; and many hitherto unac-
countable varieties that happen in our seasons, such as a
general severity or mildness of uncommon winters or
burning summers, may possibly meet with an easy solu-
tion in the real inequality of the sun's rays." If our
sun be a variable star diffusing heat in greater or less
degrees at different times, or if it be a star growing
old and burning out, the credit of the idea as well
as of " lost " stars in the ocean of infinitude may justly
be claimed, in our day at least, for this poetic and
musical observer of the heavens. To shed a ray of
light on this question of sunshine Herschel sought,
but sought in vain, for temperatures in ages that were
past. He could get none. He was not aware of
the thermometers made by the school of Qalileo

which had been made" was the British catalogue published by
Flamsteed in 1712, and afterwards in better condition in 1725. It
contains about 3000 stars. See Lalande, i. 284.

OUR SUN'S VARIATIONS OF HEAT 135

and lost to sight till Libri discovered them, and
made them the common property of science. But,
resolved not to be baffled, Herschel turned to the
rise and fall of the price of wheat at Windsor as an
indication of the warmth or coldness of the sun's
rays. It was his only resource, and it was an idea
worthy of a baffled man of science. But critics in
the highest quarters attacked and ridiculed this seeker
after truth as if he were guilty of supreme folly.
Leaders of thought in every branch of science and
in every department of life have to b^ar the brunt
of ridicule from learned ignorance ! ^

These were the first steps taken by Herschel, it may
be said, in his quest after the plan on which Almighty
Wisdom built the world of suns and systems. A
farther step forward was made when he addressed
himself to ascertain the motion of the sun and solar
system through space. That there was such a motion
he did not doubt. Some had held the same faith
before him; astronomers as able had refused it a
hearing. He converted it from faith to fact What
it means is that our sun with his most distant planet
and comet, with every particle of matter that owns
his sway, is travelling onward through space, round
a centre of force apparently, and constrained by
Newton's law of gravitation. Are these facts or
fancies, leading features in the plan of creation or
dreams of a mere enthusiast? Herschel not only
believed they were facts ; he set himself to prove it.

^ The tables he took advantage of were those given by Adam Smith
in The Wealth of Nations. The ridicule that was heaped upon him
may be seen in the Edinburgh RevieWy and in a letter signed J. M.,
Scots Magazine, 1807, p. 829.

136 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

When he had proceeded some way in his inquiries,
he received from a friend a copy of a catalogue of
eighty stars made by Mayer of Gottingen in 1756,
"and compared with the same stars as given by
Eoemer in 1706." Both Roemer and Mayer were men
of the highest ability. Previously he knew this
catalogue only in an extract which he found in a
French book on astronomy. Setting to work on the
new material thus furnished, and laying aside thirteen
or fourteen of the stars as those he had already
examined, he separated the others into two classes,
those which went for his view of a motion of the
sun through space, and those whose motions "must
be ascribed to a real motion in the stars themselvea"
Mayer, admirable astronomer though Herschel admitted
him to be, did not countenance the idea of a motion
of the sun with all its planets through space.
" Were it so," he wrote in 1760, " were the sun and
all the planets and our home, the earth, advancing
towards some quarter, all the stars in that part of
the heavens would seem to open out, and those in the
opposite quarter to come together, just as, when you
are walking through a wood, the trees which are
in front of you seem to separate from each other,
and those which are behind to draw closer."
Herschel, seizing on Mayers illustration of trees in
a wood, declared that these very changes were taking
place among stars in the heavens. At the same time
he was encouraged by a short tract sent him by the
author. Dr. Alexander Wilson, Professor of Astronomy
at Glasgow, and printed in 1777, entitled Thoughts
on General Chravitation and Views tlience arising as to
the State of the Universe. A friendship sprang up

SUN'S MOVEMENT THROUGH SPACE 137

between the two men, and Glasgow seems to have
become a favourite place of summer pilgrimage to
Herschel. It was clear that he was favoured by the
flowing tide of scientific thought. He took it at the
flood: he even guided it into the channels along
which it has since flowed in an ever increasing
volume. It " is an arduous task," he said of this quest
after our solar system's movement in space, " which we
must not hope to see accomplished in a little time ; but
we are not to be discouraged from the attempt. Let
us, at all events, endeavour to lay a good foundation
for those who are to come after us." And this
good foundation, by precept and example, he did lay.

With the boldness of a man who had confidence
in himself and his instruments, he wrote: "I think
we are no more authorised to suppose the sun at
rest than we should be to deny the diurnal motion
of the earth, except in this respect, that the proofs
of the latter are very numerous, whereas the former
rests only on a few, though capital testimonies." He
founded this conclusion on a discussion of the motions
observed in seven of the principal fixed stars. But
in support of his view he also quoted a table of the
proper motions of twelve stars in fifty years given
by Lalande, motion in the two directions known to
astronomers as right ascension and declination, cor-
responding to longitude and latitude on the earth.
Twenty-seven motions altogether had to be accounted
for. On the hypothesis of a general movement of
the solar system through space, twenty-two out of
these twenty-seven movements were explained. The
live exceptions he "resolved into the real proper
motion of the stars." He did not then know whether

138 MERSCMEL AND HIS WORK

the motion was of one star round a companion star, or
round some far greater and immensely more distant sun.

The conclusion which Herschel arrived at was that
the whole solar system was at that time moving to-
wards the constellation Hercules in the northern sky,
and that the star " X Herculis is possibly as well chosen
as any we can fix upon in that part of the heavens *'
for the point we are moving towards. He modified
this view in 1804 on receiving more correct measure-
ments from the Astronomer - Boyal : " It will be
necessary to mention that I have no longer supposed
the solar motion to be directed towards X Herculia
A point at no very great distance from this star
has been chosen." As the direction of the tangent to
the sun's orbit is constantly changing, this change
of direction from age to age is unavoidable. He
did not attempt to estimate precisely the rate of
motion, but, " in a general way," he considered that
it "cannot certainly be less than that which the
earth has in her annual orbit." At the same time
he expected that future astronomers would assist him
in determining the direction of the solar motion ; and
he added that he had " begun a series of observations
upon several zones of double stars," with the view
of establishing or overturning his hypothesis. His
estimate of the rate of the sun's motion may not
be correct. Probably it is only from five to nine
miles a second, or less than half what he made it:
but science has accepted his view of the point, to
which the solar system has, for an hundred years,
been advancing. Recently a Lyrss (Vega) has been
claimed as the point we are now making for.

In the years that followed his first papers on The

LABORATORIES OF THE UNIVERSE 139

Construction of the Heavens, Herschel, with wider
views, a better instrument, and a clearer insight
into what he considered "the Laboratories of the
universe, wherein the most salutary remedies for the
decay of the whole are prepared," essayed a bolder
flight into a world of "things, unattempted yet in
prose or rhyme." Stars, clusters of stars, and nebulas
were the building stones, so to speak, out of which
Almighty Wisdom constructed the starry sphere
around our earth. How many of them exist, what
are their relations to each other, and how are they
arranged in space ? were some of the questions to which
he sought an answer. When he began the work of
observation, he " surmised that several nebulae might
yet remain undiscovered for want of sufficient light to
detect them. . . . The event has plainly proved that
my expectations were well founded; for I have
already found 466 new nebulas and clusters of stars,
none of which, to my present knowledge, have been
seen before by any person." Great though the dis-
covery was, it was only the beginning of others
still greater. These nebulae or little white clouds
were similar to the Milky Way in the colour of their
light, but apparently of immensely less extent. The
first known of them, properly so called, was that of
Andromeda, to which the attention of astronomers
was directed by Simon Marius in 1612. Others
were seen and recorded during the next century
and a half, but the Magellanic clouds were visible
to the naked eye and formed a striking spectacle
in the southern heavens. The Dutch, who saw them
in their voyages to India round South Africa, called
them the Clouds of the Cape. Astronomers were

I40 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

slowly feeling their way to a fuller knowledge of the
"white clouds" they were discovering among the
stars. La Caille, when working at a catalogue of
about ten thousand stars in South Africa, set down the
places of forty-two, which he saw in the telescope.
He divided them into three classes ; fourteen in which
there was no appearance of stars ; fourteen which were
clearly composed of small stars ; and fourteen which
combined the characters of both these classes, small
stars surrounded or attended by white spots. His
labours were published in 1755. Herschel followed at
the end of the century, vastly extended our know-
ledge of these singular objects, and completed the
classification which the Frenchman began.

Turning his attention to the broad band of light
known as the Milky Way, of which the various
nebulsB " seemed to be portions, spread out in diflcrent
parts of the heavens," Herschel at once solved the
puzzle that then divided the astronomical world. Is
it the diffused light of innumerable stars, or a shining
gas ? He describes it as beyond doubt " a most
extensive stratum of stars of various sizes " ; and
" that our sun is actually one of the heavenly bodies
belonging to it is as evident." These were two steps
forward, but he did not stop with them. He examined
that shining zone in all directions with a powerful
telescope — a 20 - feet reflector — piercing to the
borders of its length, breadth, and thickness. He
even undertook to count the number of stars he
saw. He called this census of stars gauging the
heavens. Four years afterwards, he called it analys-
ing them, and spoke of his method as " perhaps the
only one by which we can arrive at a knowledge

GAUGING THE HEAVENS 141

of their construction." He admits, however, that, in
course of time, "many things must have been sug-
gested by the great variety in the order, the size,
and the compression of the stars as they presented
themselves to his view." As the number of stars he
counted increased, the brightness of the Milky Way
increased; as the number diminished, its apparent
brightness to the naked eye diminished also. The law
of gravitation he felt certain existed among that vast
multitude of suns and systems, just as it exists in
pulling a stone to the ground. At first this was
mere suspicion. More than twenty years elapsed
before he could say it was an established fact.

He continued his review of the heavens, or his
gauging of the stars. The results were so marvellous
that all the world — men of science, the common
people, even children at school — wondered. Some-
times he saw, in a small celestial space, as many
as 250, or 340, or 424, or 588 stars; at other times
he counted only 3 or 4, 5 or 6. The star-wealth
of some of these regions was so vast that in one
only 5** in breadth — a very small part of the whole
vault of the heavens — there were about 330,000
shining suns or stars! The Chancellor of the
University of Halle, who visited Herschel shortly
before his death, evidently got from the astronomer
himself that he had " often known more than 50,000
pass before his sight within an hour," and he records
his own wonder, and the wonder of men generally,
while these discoveries were still fresh in their minds,
that "after the invention of his instruments, I. H.
Schroeter, the celebrated astronomer of Lilienthal,
might well compute the fixed stars in the southern

142 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

and northern hemispheres at more than twelve
millions in number."

The average of many hundreds of these gauges
gave him what he called " the contents of the heavens."
Where the stars were exceedingly crowded, " no more
than half a field was counted, and even sometimes
only a quadrant " ; but the result of these vast labours
was that the Milky Way could not be described as
other than "a very exten&ive, branching, compound
congeries of many miUiona of stars; which, most
probably, owes its origin to many remarkably large
as well as pretty closely scattered small stars, that
may have drawn together the rest." Imagination
stands appalled at the thought of millions of shining
stars, each of the same kindred as our sun, and each, it
may be supposed, with a train of habitable worlds like
his planets, all circling round their central orb. The
littleness of man, the smallness of human life, the
meanness of its petty details, that usually fill the
whole horizon of human thought, are dwarfed into
nothingness in presence of these stupendous realities,
till even they become insignificant before the nobler
and more inspiring conception of the grandeur of
the soul, which measures and weighs these innumer-
able suns, which takes them up in the hollow of its
hand, which deals with them as playthings for its
leisure moments, and which says to every one of
them, I am greater and of more worth than thou,
yes, greater than all your millions put together.
" There is no speech nor language where their voice
is not heard."

By these star gauges Herschel did a service to the
world, for which humanity can never be suflSciently

THE MILKY WAY 143

thankful. The plan as well as the labour of thus
estimating " the contents of the heavens," and lifting
man's mind to a higher level than it ever attained
before, were altogether his own, unless we add that
his devoted sister Caroline shared the labour and,
it must be added, the dangers of the work. What
a vista of eternity and infinitude was unfolded by
the musician of Bath ! It seemed as if he had built a
bridge for thought to span the gulf which separates the
finite from the infinite, the temporal from the eternal,
in this incredible profusion of suns and systems, of
inconceivable spaces and times.

Of the length, breadth, and thickness of these strata
of millions of stars that form the Milky Way, we have
but the faintest conception. Still, Herschel made an
estimate, which shows the immensity of space covered
by this island of stars in the ocean of infinitude, if we
may still presume to speak of it in these terms. '' In
the sides of the stratum opposite to our situation in
it, where the gauges often run below 5, our nebula " —
the white cloud called the Milky Way — " cannot ex-
tend to 100 times the distance of Sirius.*' But we
know now, what Herschel did not know, that light,
which darts from the sun to our earth in eight minutes,
takes about ten years at the same rate to travel
the distance betwin Sinus and us. One hundred times
that distance would be traversed by light in 1000
years. And, if the f arthest-off stars of the Milky Way
are nearly five hundred times as far away from our
earth as Sirius, the swift messenger who brings us
tidings of them would be five thousand years on his
journey, and could only tell us what was then taking
place, opt what may be happening now. Herschel

144 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

believed that his telescope sounded sjpace to this and
far greater depths without finding traces of nebulosity
— ^gas or star dust — in the regions it reached.^ He said
also that his telescope sounded the depths of past
time not less than of space. Be his ideas reality or
romance, they give us a sublime conception of the
greatness and worth of the human mind buried in its
pigmy house of clay, and chafing against the chains
that bind it to earth and time.

Sublime though Herschel's conceptions were, he did
not conceal from himself or others that "a certain
degree of doubt may be left about the arrangement
and scattering of the stars " in the Milky Way. They
were founded on the supposition of " numberless stars
of various sizes, scattered over an indefinite portion of
space in such a manner as to be almost equally dis-
tributed throughout the whole." This was a large
supposition to make; it is not correct, and it was a
comer-stone that might be knocked away at any
moment. The barriers he required to overleap were
the distance and the relative sizes of the stars. These
barriers remained insurmountable during his lifetime.
It was next assumed, for it could not be said to be
proved, that "there is but little room to expect a
connection between our nebula" — ^the Milky Way —
"and any of the neighbouring ones; . . . for if our
nebula is not absolutely a detached one, I am firmly
persuaded that an instrument may be made large
enough to discover the places where the stars continue
onwards. A very bright, milky nebulosity must there
undoubtedly come on." At that time Herschel imag-
ined space to be a vast ocean of light-bearing ether,

* PhU, Trans,, pp. 249, 247 (100 times), 497 times.

TIME FOR GAUGING THE HEAVENS 14S

studded with continents and islands of stars, which he
called nebulae, clusters, or groups. The Milky Way,
with its many millions of shining suns, is one of these
thickly peopled islands, separated from many others as
rich or perhaps richer of worlds, in this infinite ocean.
Of these nebulae or clusters, or star islands, he had,
up to that time, counted "more than 900, many of
which, in all probability, are equally extensive with
that which we inhabit ; and yet they are all separated
from each other by very considerable intervals. Some
there are that seem to be double and treble; and
though with most of these it may be that they are
at a very great distance from each other, yet we allow
that some such conjunctions really are to be found.
But then these compound or double nebules still make a
detached link in the great chain." He fell from some
of these views at a later period, wholly or in part.

Herschel delighted in these attractive speculations.
In a paper on the power of telescopes to penetrate
space, one of the conclusions he came to was that,
while his 20-feet reflector "might possibly have
reached to some distance beyond the apparent bounds
of the Milky Way," his 40-feet would reach stars
from which light would take about two millions of
years to reach our earth. A ray of light revealing to
us the history of stars as it was two millions of years
ago! If such things are dreams or miscalculations,
they soar into the sublimest regions of mortal thought.
More amenable to arithmetic is his calculation, that it
will require not less than 598 years, of 100 working
hours each, to take a census of the stars by looking
with his 40-feet "only one single moment into each
part of space, and, even then, so much of the southern

ID

146 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

hemisphere will remain unexplored as will take up
213 years more to examine." In these numbers Her-
schel was perhaps mistaken. Struve at Pulkowa found
80 nights suitable out of 120 clear nights; but Sir
John Herschel's experience at the Cape of Good Hope
gave him the whole or parts of 131 nights in 1836,
and at least 100 in the following year. The estimate
of 598 years, or rather 811, by Sir William Herschel
may be set down as excessive.

Herschel does not appear to have been altogether
satisfied with the position he had taken up. It
was not warranted by pure and inductive science.
The foundation on which alone he could build with
confidence had not been laid, the distance of fixed stars
and nebulsd. " To these arguments," he says, " which
rest on the firm basis of a series of observation, we may
add the following considerations drawn from analogy."
Science demands something more trustworthy than
arguments and analogy. Mathematical science is not
content with probability : it demands demonstration, and
this he could not give. He had a distinct idea of an
ocean, we shall say, of ether, transmitting light. In that
ocean are thousands of floating islands, each composed
of myriads or millions of shining worlds, all communi-
cating with each other by far-piercing sunbeams.
What the telegraphic messages thus sent from sun to
sun, from island to island, may be, Herschel had no
means at first of knowing. He came to understand
and even read some of these messages in later years.
We are able to read more of them now, for they tell
the sizes of suns, their rates of motion, their direction
of motion, and other pieces of star history incredibly
interesting to curious man. Herschel did not imagine

RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF NEBULiE 147

that this ocean of ether is in any degree impervious
to light. His friend Dr. Olbers, of Bremen, suggested
that it might be. Precisely as the glass or the horn,
through which rays of light pass, keeps part of them
back or absorbs them, the infinite ocean of ether may
have a similar efiect, though in a vastly less degree.
This apprehension remains a mere speculation to this
day. Sometimes these islands of stars were broken
into clusters of stars showing magnificent colours,
and forming the most splendid objects that can be
seen in the heavens. They seemed to concentrate
round a centre. The Milky Way is one of these islands,
of which the population consists in suns and worlds.
Others, separated from it and from each other, and
even apparently changing their shape from age to age,
are " generally seen upon a very clear and pure ground
without any star near them that might be supposed to
belong to them." With all this sublimity of exposition
and explanation, Herschel at the same time asks for con-
sideration from critics and readers, ''for, this subject
being so new, I look upon what is here given partly as
only an example to illustrate the spirit of the method."
The idea Herschel formed and then figured of the
shape of the Milky Way may be best understood
by comparing it to the palm of the hand with only
two fingers — the middle and the forefinger — and these
stretched fully out. Our sun he supposed to be near
the roofcs of the fingers, looking out into open space
through the interval between them. He had the idea
also that our star-island " has fewer marks of antiquity
upon it than the rest." He believed that its stars
" are now drawing towards various secondary centres,
and will in time separate into different clusters so as

148 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

to occasion many subdivisions." In fact, he " ascribes
a certain air of youth and vigour to many very re-
gularly scattered regions in our sidereal stratum." He
imagined also that " some parts of our system seem to
have sustained greater ravages of time than others,"
so much so that " in the body of the Scorpion is an
opening or hole " of at least four degrees broad, through
which, as through a window, infinite space can be sur-
veyed outside, till telescopes of greater power pierce the
darkness, and, it may be, reveal to our eye Milky
Ways in the far Beyond. One of them, near the con-
stellation called the Southern Cross, had long been
familiar to sailors in southern seas as the Coal Sack
of the Milky Way, a pear-shaped oval almost destitute
of stars, with which the regions around are crowded
and brilliant. "The purity and clearness of the
heavens are remarkable," he says, "when we look
out of our stratum at the sides towards Leo and
Virgo on the one hand, and Cetus on the other;
whereas the ground of the heavens becomes troubled
as we approach towards the length or height of it."
These troubled appearances seemed to arise "from
distant, straggling stars that yield hardly light enough,"
till, after a long examination of these troubled spots,
the eye gets accustomed to the dimness, and the stars
that caused the troubling come into view.

When Sir John Herschel went to the Cape of Good
Hope in 1833, to survey the southern heavens as his
father had surveyed the northern half a century before,
his aunt Caroline wrote to him, " It is not clvMers of
stars I want you to discover in the body of the Scorpion
(or thereabout), for that does not answer my expect-
ation, remembering having once heard your father,

"A HOLE IN THE HEAVENS" 149

after a long awful silence, exclaim, * Hier ist wahrhaf tig
ein Loch in Himmel 1 ' ^ and, as I said before, stopping
afterwards at the same spot, but leaving it unsatisfied."
The nephew attended to her wishes, rv/mmaged Scorpio
with the telescope, and found many blank spaces
"without the smallest star. . . . Then come on the
globular clusters, then more blank fields, then suddenly
the Milky Way comes on in large milky nebulous
irregular patches and banks."

Other Milky Ways than the star-island, to which
we belong, " which cannot well be less but are prob-
ably much larger," Herschel at one time believed he
saw in the white clouds, which float in the depths
of space, unseen by the naked eye. Sometimes his
telescope resolved them into brilliant star-dust, scat-
tered like shining jewels on the dark background of
the heavens : and sometimes not. That they are at im-
mense, at inconceivable distances from the solar system
and from each other, is evident. How far, it would
be rash to say. But Herschel's enthusiasm over-
leaped all boundaries of prudent reticence. Some of
them may be " 600 times the distance of Sirius from
us"; other clusters "cannot well be supposed to be
at less than six or eight thousand times that distance."
Light, the swiftest messenger we know, light, which
can journey round the earth eight times in a second,
would take six thousand years to bring us a message
from the nearest of these clusters, or more than eighty
thousand years from the more remote. If his views
prove correct, a messenger of wing so swift, and of foot
so tireless, may well be regarded as an angel of the
Almighty.

*' Hert indeed is 4 liole in the Heayens ! "

ISO HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

Speculations so attractive by a watcher with an eye
so keen to detect chinks in the armour, that concealed
nature's most secret workings, could not fail to be
aflTected by new facts, as they forced themselves on his
observation. He found in course of years that " the
hypothesis of an equality and an equal distribution of
stars is too far from being strictly true to be laid down
as an unerring guide in this research. . . . This con-
sideration is fully sufficient to shew that, how much
truth soever there may be in the hypothesis of an
equal distribution and equality of stars, when con-
sidered in a general view, it can be of no service in a
case where great accuracy is required." Fifteen years
later he wrote : " When we examine the Milky Way, or
the closely compressed clusters of stars, this supposed
equality of scattering must be given up." It is clear
that, until the distance and mutual relations of the
fixed stars were ascertained, mere speculations on their
size and brilliance were out of place. He found also
that Cassini's classification of nebulsd was at least
incomplete or defective. He was leaning to the belief
that some of the nebulsB are masses of shining gas,
while there may be vast masses or regions of it still
dark ; but these and other matters must be referred to
another chapter. It is enough in the meanwhile to
say that twenty-five years of further research wrought
a change on the views he once expressed. But they
also brought into distincter prominence the changeful
character of even the starry heavens. They had
wrought no change on the awe with which his con-
temporaries, however trifling they might be, regarded
" the profusion of worlds on worlds " revealed to their
view. The immense multiplication of life on our

"ONE'S IMAGINATION CRACKS" 151

little earth is on the same scale and partakes of the
same procedure as this profusion in creating worlds.
Unity of design to the remotest bounds of nature is a
conclusion that plainly results from Herschers dis-
coveries.

The worst objection taken to the writings of this
midnight watcher was the strange English he some-
times used. "Stupendous as Mr. Herschel's investi-
gations are," Horace Walpole wrote to a friend, " and
admirable as are his talents, his expression of 'our
retired comer of the universe* seems a little improper.
When a little emmet, standing on its anthill, could get
a peep into infinity, how could he think he saw a retired
comer in it? ... If there are twenty millions of
worlds, why not as many, and as many, and as many
more ? Oh, one's imagination cracks ! " ^ " To the in-
habitants of the nebulae of the present catalogue,"
Herschel wrote, "our sidereal system must appear
either as a small nebulous patch ; an extended streak
of milky light ; a large resolvable nebula ; a very com-
pressed cluster of minute stars hardly discernible ; or
as an immense collection of large scattered stars of
various sizes." Well may we repeat in sobriety and
humility what the poet, in contempt and fun, uttered
about the same time,

"Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oorsels as ithers see us."

The last two papers which Herschel wrote on The
Construction of the Heavens were given to the world
about four years before his death. They show the same
grasp of details, the same enthusiasm in working, out

1 Letters, vi. 461, 258.

1 52 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

a lofty theme, the same insight into general principles,
as illumined the first paper he wrote on the subject
thirty-five years before. Although his sun was near-
ing its going down, there was no loss of its morning
brilliance. "Of all the celestial objects consisting of
stars not visible to the eye," he writes, "the Milky
Way is the most striking. ... Its general appearance,
without applying a telescope to it, is that of a zone
surrounding our situation in the solar system, in the
shape of a succession of differently condensed patches
of brightness, intermixed with others of a fainter
tinge." But his latest observations led him to believe
that the Milky Way is a fathomless, and comparatively
thin stratum of stars, of which his 40-feet reflector
would sound the depths " to the 2300th order of dis-
tances and would then fail us." He imagined also he
'had "shown how, by an equalisation of the light of
«tars of different brightness, we may ascertain their
relative distances from the observer, in the direction
of the line in which they are seen." Among these last
words was his expressed conviction that the Milky
Way is the most brilliant, and beyond all comparison
the most extensive sidereal system. He thus held to
the end that it was one of many systems, of which it
bulked in his eyes as a great continent in an ocean of
ether, while the nebulae are outlying islands. Within
the bounds of the Milky Way he believed that all our
stars, visible to the naked eye, are contained. If an
18-inch globe represented all these stars, it would
require a line 45 feet long to be added to express
the distance of the 734th order of stars, and, while he
saw many of the 900th or 980th order, he was con-
vinced that his 40-feet telescope would penetrate space

OCEAN OF ETHER: STAR-DUST 153

to the 2300th order. We can only say with Horace
Walpole on looking at these figures, One's imagination
cracks! But definite distances had not been deter-
mined then, and are not determined yet.

Whether these be the dreams of an enthusiastic
romancer, or the sober facts of science, there can be
no doubt that the observations on which they rest are
a delightful mixture of poetry and scientific truth.
Thickly strewn over the pages of a scientific memoir
are such entries as these: ''The stars are so exceed-
ingly close and small that they cannot be counted " ;
" a beautiful cluster of stars " ; " stars are so small that
I can but just perceive some and suspect others";
" light without stars " ; "a brilliant cluster " ; "a coarse
cluster of large stars of different sizes " ; "a rich cluster
of very compressed stars." The wealth of the heavens
passes both the language and the comprehension of
man. Star-dust, sparkling with more than diamond
lustre on the dark background of the heavens, has
become a common figure of speech. Jewels of silver,
jewels of gold, rubies, diamonds, and sapphires are seen
in admirably distinct disorder in the ^eat mirror of
the telescope. The prose of the heavens surpasses the
brightest poetry of earth.^

Whether William Herschel was justified in holding
to the theory of an ocean of ether with thousands of
dimly seen Milky Ways floating about in it, or whether
he modified his view into a belief that the starry
worlds, seen from our earth, are parts of a connected
whole, is of little consequence in these days. Perhaps
he was himself in doubt which view to take. But he
was nearer to realising infinitude of space and eternity

1 PM. TVoTW., 1818, pp. 437-50,

154 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

of time— if the phrase be allowable— than any man
ever was before hL. He marks an era in the p^gress
of human thought and experience, for his words leave
on the mind of a reader an awful impression of un-
speakable vastness in space and time, of multitudinous
arrangements for working out with singular ease and
success some vast whole, and of undiscovered purposes
in the designs of a Being to whose nature ours is of
kin, though we feel ourselves to be but nothings, or
less than nothings, in His presence. To ignore or deny
this impression is to do an injustice to humanity.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUN

So carefully and persistently was the sun studied by
Herschel that, for the sake of clearness, it is advisable
to arrange his work not in the order of time, but
according to the subject he treats of. He began at
an early period to watch the sun's face, and to make
experiments with the view of di8C0veri;g its history,
past and future. Could he but read that history or
even a chapter of it, he felt that he would be able to
read the history of other suns as well as ours, and
perhaps to lay a foundation for fellow-labourers in
the same cause to build a temple to science on. He
succeeded beyond his wishes, or at least his hopes.

The first thing he endeavoured to ascertain was,
whether the sun was stationary or nearly stationary
in the heavens. Astronomers had already discovered
that its immense fiery globe had a day like our earth,
that is, that it turned round on its axis precisely as
the earth does. The time it takes they found to be
25* 7*» 48°* of our reckoning. This is the length of the
sun's day. But Herschel asked if the sun had not a
year as well as a day, a time — vast, immeasurable,
perhaps — in which it revolves round a centre, hidden
from man's knowledge, but not from man's sight, if he
only knew where to look for it. Herschel looked for

IS6 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

an unknown centre. He did not find it, but he be-
lieved, as we have already seen, first, that the sun was
moving among the stars, and second, that it was
moving towards a spot in the constellation Hercules in
the northern sky.

As the sun is the source of light and heat, and both
of them had to be considered in his observations, it
was natural that Herschel should turn his thoughts to
the solar spectrum, as we call what is commonly spoken
of as the rainbow. A glass prism produces the same
effect on a beam of sunlight as a raindrop or a cloud
curtain composed of millions of them: it divides or
decomposes the white light of one sun into that of
seven suns of different colours, red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo, violet, and it also bends or refracts
them from the straight line the sunbeam would other-
wise pursue. The red is the least bent, the violet
most. By the refraction or bending is meant what is
seen by thrusting one half of a walking-stick into
water, and keeping the other half out of it in the air.
But it happened that in shielding his eye from the
sun when looking at its disc through a telescope,
Herschel had used glass of various colours to dim the
glare and heat. This experience was fatal to the use of
glass coloured red. "I began with a red glass," he
says, ''and, not finding it to stop light enough, took
two of them together. These intercepted full as much
light as was necessary ; but I soon found that the eye
could not bear the irritation, from a sensation of heat,
which, it appeared, these glasses did not stop. I now
took two green glasses : but found that they did not
intercept light enough. I therefore smoked one of
them: and it appeared that, notwithstanding they

THE SUN'S SPECTRUM 157

still transmitted considerably more light than the red
glasses, they remedied the former inconvenience of an
irritation arising from heat. Repeating these trials
several times, I constantly found the same result."
How to see the sun distinctly without inconvenience
or danger from the heat continued to occupy his
thoughts for years. "I viewed the sun through
water," he wrote in 1801. " It keeps the heat off so
well, that we may look for any length of time, with-
out the least inconvenience." " Ink diluted with water
gave an image of the sun as white as snow ; and I saw
objects very distinctly, without darkening glasses."

Herschel introduced his papers on the sun's light
and heat with a wise remark, which proved him to be
as good an observer in the world of mind as in that of
matter. " It is sometimes of great use in natural philo-
sophy to doubt of things that are commonly taken
for granted; especially as the means of resolving any
doubt, when once it is entertained, are often within
our reach. ... It will therefore not be amiss to notice
what gave rise to a surmise, that the power of heating
and illuminating objects might not be equally distri-
buted among the variously coloured rays." The ex-
periments, which he then made on the light and heat
given out by each colour of the spectrum, were admir-
ably imagined and beautifully carried out. He was really
engaged on a continuation of Newton's experiments on
sunbeams, but the field of research was new and untrod.
Gradually the questions to which he sought answers
began to take shape more distinctly in his mind.
When a prism intercepts a beam of sunlight, let into
a darkened room through a hole in the window shutter,
and the band of coloured light, five times as long as it

158 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

is broad, falls on a screen placed behind the prism, is
the whole band equally heated or equally luminous? and
is the whole sunbeam found decomposed into the colours
seen ? Regarding equality of heating and illumination
in the various colours, HerscheFs experiments made it
plain that at the red end there are visible rays, which
are hotter than those in any other part of the coloured
band or spectrum. The heat he found diminishing as
the ref rangibility increases from the red to the violet end.
The power of illuminating an object, on the contrary,
increases from the red to the orange, from the orange
to the yellow, and reaches its greatest intensity be-
tween the yellow and the green, after which it rapidly
decreases in the blue, more so in the indigo, till it
becomes "very deficient in the violet." One of his
experiments, by the help of a microscope, was with a
guinea : — " Red showed four remarkable points : very
distinct. Orange, better illuminated: very distinct.
Yellow, still better illuminated: very distinct: the
points all over the field of view are coloured; some
green; some red} some yellow; and some white, en-
circled with black about them. Between yellow and
green is the maximum of illumination : extremely dis-
tinct. Ghreen, as well illuminated as the yellow : very
distinct. Blv£, much inferior in illumination: very dis-
tinct. Indigo, badly illuminated : distinct. Violet, very
badly illuminated : I can hardly see the object at all."
His second inquiry was. Is a sunbeam passing
through a prism and received on a screen behind it
represented entirely by the coloured and visible band
of the spectrum ? His answer to this question was a
distinct tio, and a hinted suspicion that the no extended
or might extend farther than it was in his power to

"RITTER'S DARK RAYS" i59

prove. He could and did show that a thermometer
rose in passing from the violet to the red end of the
spectrum: but he did more. He placed the ther-
mometer beyond the visible red, and found that, as it
continued to rise, heat-rays, invisible to the eye and
less bent from the straight path of the sunbeam, gave
the greatest heat. He must have asked himself. Is
there not something similar at the violet end ; but he
had not the means of answering the question. He did
what was next best. He asked a question pregnant
with great results, and destined to bear an abundant
harvest for the welfare and instruction of man. " It
may be pardonable if I digress for a moment, and
remark, that the foregoing researches ought to lead us
on to others. May not the chemical properties of the
prismatic colours be as different as those which relate
to light and heat : . . . they may reside only in one of
the colours." To this question he could neither give
nor get an answer. A short time passed, and the
answer came from Germany and, independently, from
England. " The existence of solar rays accompanying
light, more refrangible than the violet rays, and
cognisable by their chemical effects, was first
ascertained by Mr. Bitter." They were called "The
dark rays of Ritter," and " appeared to extend beyond
the violet rays of the prismatic spectrum, through a
space nearly equal to that which is occupied by the
violet." "Paper dipped in a solution of nitrate of
silver" was used to prove the existence of these
chemical rays and to introduce the days of photo-
graphy. It was most fitting that it should be so.
An astronomer led the way in this new quest after
invisible rays ; chemistry supplemented his discoveries

i6o HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

by paving the way for photography, and paid back its
debt to astronomy by shortening the processes of its
art, and faithfully recording the face of the heavens,
as the most skilful draughtsman could not do. Truly,
Herschel was a seer, whose imagination captured
truth, though men less gifted mocked him as a dreamer.
The equerry in Windsor Castle was justified in assur-
ing Miss Burney that time would do justice to Herschel,
as it had done to Newton.

Herschel's mistakes, in his subsequent inquiries, arose
largely from his belief in Newton's theory that light-
giving bodies, like the sun, emit infinitely small
particles, which enter the eye and affect the retina so
as to produce vision. Hence he spoke of the momenta
of these particles. His contemporary. Dr. Thomas
Young, maintained that light, like air, was produced
by waves propagated at a vast rate of speed, and in
immensely short lengths, through a universally diflftised
and infinitely rare medium, called ether} A French-
man, Fresnel, has got most of the credit of establishing
this theory. But the third question asked and
answered by Herschel in these papers about the
sun was. Is light the same or different from heat?
His experiments were carefully arranged and as
carefully made, and the conclusion reached was that
they are different. He also wrote two long papers on
the coloured rings produced when two watch-glasses,
or one and a plane glass, are pressed together so as to
leave a thin plate of air between them. Amid un-

^ Dr. Young, **The Bakerian Lecture, PhU. Trails, for 1802, pp.
14, 15, '* A luniuiferous ether pervades the universe, rare and elastic in
a high degree." He was well abused by an Edinburgh Reviewer for
this Lecture.

SUN SPOTS i6i

undoubtedly excellent observations he was too hasty in
what he then wrote, and too rash in the conclusions
he then drew. But let it be recorded to his honour
that to him belongs the credit of first sending the
beams of Sirius and other sunny stars through a prism,
for the purpose of determining whether their light is
like our sun's or not. It was a most brilliant idea,
carried out before the world was ready to receive it.

The great question Herschel set himself to solve
regarding the sun was, What is it ? He knew, as all
men had known, that it was a vast fiery ball ruling
earth and sky ; but he saw, as they saw, nothing save
the outside of the ball. Was it a mighty furnace
within as it was without ? In Newton's days, two or
three generations earlier, there were people who
" supposed the sun to be cold," although Newton easily
showed that, to "a body hard by the sun, his heat
would be 50,000 times greater than we feel it in a hot
smnmer day, which is vastly greater than any heat we
know on earth." ^ Herschel was aware that the spots,
the black spots on its face, were vast dark holes in its
white brightness, so large that they would let the
earth dive in, and be at a thousand miles' distance
all round from the burning, blazing clouds. But while
he knew this, he had also learned from the writings of
others that these black rifts were careering over its face
from west to east at the rate of more than a mile
every second. What did it all mean, was the question
he wished answered. Fabricius in 1611, and Galileo
about the same time, divide between them the honour
of discovering these spots on the sun's face. The
former tells the story of his first sight of a spot, of his

^ Brewster, Life^ ii. 455.
II

1 62 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

own and his father's keenness in viewing it till the
heat affected their eyes, of his extreme impatience till
morning again revealed to him in the sun itself what
he thought was only a cloud, and of the incredible
delight with which he welcomed the strange stain on
the sun's brightness, but removed a little from the
place where it was seen the day before — he tells a true
story with the pen of a romancer inventing a world of
wonders. The darkened room, the hole in the shutter,
the sheet of white paper to receive the bright image,
and the sun's rotation on his axis then burst upon the
world in his pages.

Some imagined that these vast fields of darkness
were smoke from gigantic volcanoes on the sun;
others considered them to be a mighty expanse of
scum floating on a burning ocean, or dark clouds
swimming in highly heated gas. But Herschel's tele-
scope told him they were immense pits dug somehow
in the shining and fiery brightness, while waves of
fiercer brightness surged round the edges in crests of
vast height, for which the name facuLce, or torches, had
been long before invented. Over many million of
square miles of the sun's surface this rising of
fiercely heated waves and this digging out of black
hollows were continually going on in a greater or
lesser degree. As many as forty of the latter were
once seen by Herschel, when he was watching
Mercury, so to speak, picking his way amongst
them during his passage across the sun's disc.
Other observers laid claim to counting no fewer than
fifty at one and the same time. What were they?
In July 1643 Hevelius saw a procession of spots and
bright crests more than a third of the sun's surface in

HERSCHEUS THEORY OF THE SPOTS 163

length, or nearly twice as far as the distance of the
moon from the earth ! Then spots were seen of such a
depth that when they reached the sun's edge they
made a notch on the rim. It was evident they were
not volcanoes spouting forth solid matter to immense
heights and blackening with solar smoke the photo-
sphere, as Schroeter called the envelope of light which
clothed the sun. They were not dark bodies like
planets circling round this fiery ball. Nor were they
masses of black scum floating on an ocean of bright-
ness. In 1779 Herschel saw a great spot which
appeared to be divided into two parts. One of them
was more than thirty-one thousand miles in length,
the other was about twenty thousand, and a ridge of
shining light separated the one from the other. Four
years later he observed another, "a fine large spot,"
and followed it to the edge of the sun. He came to
the conclusion that he was looking into a vast pit,
with " very broad, shelving sides," on to " the real solid
body of the sun itself." Eight years after, in 1791, he
came to the same conclusion regarding another large
spot: it was a pit below the level of the bright
surface ; round the dark part it had a broad margin
less bright than the surface, and also lower down.
Accompanying the spots were the facvXce, as Hevelius
called " the ridges of elevation above the rough surface "
of the sun. " About all the spots the shining matter
seemed to have been disturbed; and was uneven,
lumpy, and zigzagged in an irregular manner."
These waves or ridges of brightness are of immense
extent, but Herschel objected to call them torches, as
"they appeared like the shrivelled elevations on a
dried apple, extended in length, and most of them

1 64 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

joined together, making waves, or waving lines." In
1801 he had advanced to the "strong suspicion that
one half of our sun is less favourable to a copious
emission of rays than the other ; and that its variable
lustre may possibly appear to other solar systems, as
irregular periodical stars are seen by us/' In the same
paper he records in his observations that he counted at
one time 45 " openings " or spots, on the following day
50, and three days later above 60. A cloud, hanging
over one of these openings, was seen to move a third of
the way across the mighty chasm in fifty-eight minutes.
Herschel's theory of the sun then may be thus
stated. There is first the region of "luminous solar
clouds " which, adding also the elevation of the facuUB,
cannot be less than 1843, nor much more than 2765
miles in depth. These solar clouds he compares in
density with the aurora borealis of our skies. Under-
neath this envelope of brightness is the sun's atmo-
sphere, which may be so clouded as to shield the body
of the sun and the beings, who live there, from the
intense heat and glare above. The body of the sun
lies still lower, and " is diversified with mountains and
valleys." Some may deem it the horrid abode of lost
souls ; others may see in its cool retreats the home of
blessed spirits. But so imbued is man's mind with the
idea of unbearable heat in the sun that, in a court of
law, belief in its coolness was at that time quoted as a
proof of insanity, and of incompetence in a man to
manage his own afiairs.^ This, in short compass, is
Herschel's view of the constitution of the sun. It is
largely founded on the theory of his friend Wilson,
the Professor of Astronomy in the University of

^ Scots Magaasine, 1807, p. 329.

HERSCHEL SAW NO TOTAL ECLIPSE 165

Glasgow. So far as spots are concerned, it works out
to an attractive and popular resemblance to truth.
Suppose a disturbance — call it hurricane or tornado—
to take place in the solar atmosphere. Everything is
on a gigantic scale, mountains, winds, waves in this
ocean of light A mighty updraft from below rolls
back, for a longer or shorter time, the luminous solar
clouda Into the vast pit thus laid open these clouds
pour a flood of light on the body and cloudy atmo-
sphere of the sun. The former looks black against the
light, but reveals mountains upwards of three hundred
miles in height; the latter, with its shelving sides,
returns more of the light, and is less black ; while the
shining matter, rolled back into waves of enormous
length and height, is heaped up in fiery storms round
the vast gulf. The dark body of the sun is called the
macula, or spot ; the better lighted atmospheric shield,
the penumbra ; and the heaped-up waves the facuLce,
which give the sun's surface the roughness of aspect it
presents.^

This was all that Herschel saw or imagined. It was
far within the truth for awe-inspiring beauty, and for
the gigantic movements of these "luminous solar
clouds." Had he seen the " blood-red streak " of the
total eclipse of 1706, or the "corona" and "the ruddy
clouds" of that of 1715, the science of astronomy
would have been perhaps half a century in advance of
the position he left it in at his death. He did not see

^ Had Herschel known and reflected on the letter of Sir Isaac Newton
printed in his Idfe, ii. 455, he would probably not have published this
theory. "The whole body of the sun, therefore, must be red-hot" is
Newton's conclusion. Even then it would look black against the sur-
face luminous clouds.

1 66 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

either blood-red streak or corona. There is no reason
to believe that he even read of them. His pigmy moun-
tains of three or four hundred miles were molehills to
the vast tongues of red flame shot up from the burning
ocean of the sun's surface to a height of 200,000 miles
in a few minutes, rising from and falling back into that
ocean's bosom in a couple of hours. Herschel would
have revelled in these gigantic strides of living flame.
He would have cast away his theory of solid body,
atmosphere and luminous solar clouds. Probably he
would have held fast to his comparison of the light-
clouds to our northern lights, and to his idea that the
comets help to maintain the light and heat of our sun.
How his glory is kept up from age to age, from mil-
lennium to millennium, we know as little as he did.
Truly we are only at the beginning of our knowledge
of this and other glorious stars; Herschel may have
thought, and probably did think, that we were nearly
at the end.

CHAPTER X

PLANETS AND COMETS

The first of the heavenly bodies to which Herschel
really turned his eyes with the longing of a traveller
in an untrodden land of romance, appears to have been
the planet Saturn. He was then forging the instru-
ments which were destined to disclose the hidden
things of creation, and to give an impulse to the study
of them, that has gone on from wonder to wonder till
the present day. He was keeping a journal, making
entries of what he saw, and laying a foundation for
future progress. But his method of writing was some-
what peculiar. His papers were to a large extent
copies of entries made in his journal, or the impressions
he received at the moment while sun or star or planet
was under his eye. There was thus room for mistakes,
which it is not surprising that he fell into ; the wonder
is that he fell into so few. Of mistakes resulting from
this hasty method of working he was himself conscious;
but it led to another inconvenience. He did not delay
publishing his views till he was perfectly sure of their
accuracy. The result was diffuseness of statement
and unnecessary returning to the same subject. To
give his views in the order of time would thus be
wearisome and useless. We shall keep to the order of
subjects, bringing them, as far as possible, to a focus.

167

1 68 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

The planet Mercury did not receive much attention
from Herschel; but, slight though his interest in it
seems to have been, he could not make it a field of
observation without shedding light on things then
unknown, and afterwards forgotten. As a transit or
passage of the planet over the sun's face was due at
Windsor in the early morning of November 9, 1802,
and Herschel's "apparatus^ for viewing the sun was
then in the highest perfection," he was on the watch
for what might happen. The weather proved as
favourable as he could wish, and more than forty dark
spots were counted on the sun's disc. A little black
pea traversing the disc among dark spots of vastly
greater size, it might have been feared, would be lost to
view or only seen now and again. On the contrary,
the black dot was easily seen during the four hours
that remained of its passage across. As the sun rose
higher, " the corrugations of the luminous solar surface
up to the very edge of the planet " were visible with a
10-feet reflector. "When the planet was sufficiently
advanced towards the largest opening," or spot, " of the
northern zone, he compared the intensity of the black-
ness of the two objects; and found the disk of
Mercury considerably darker, and of a more uniform
black tint, than the area of the large opening." As
it approached the edge of the sun, the whole of
its disc was ''as sharply defined as possible; there
was not the least appearance of any atmospheric
ring, or different tinge of light, visible about the
planet." As the black dot vanished on leaving the
bright body of the sun, there was not the slightest
distortion of the sun's limb or in its own figure. The

^ The mirror of the reflector used on this occasion was made of glass.

HERSCHEL AND SCHROETER 169

planet was snuffed out at once on leaving the sun's
body. Things were somewhat diflFerent with the
planet Venus.

Venus had for many years been the object of close
research by Schroeter, a most painstaking observer of
Lilienthal, then a well-known observatory in the duchy
of Bremen. Her appearance had also been carefully
studied by Herschel for nearly twenty years. The
former made out that he had measured on her surface
lofty mountains six times higher than Chimborazo, or
about twenty-three miles in height. The latter could
see nothing of the kind, and poked some grave scientific
fun at his friend, who complained, in a learned paper,
that he could not "reconcile it to the friendly senti-
ments which the author has always hitherto expressed
towards me, and which I hold extremely precious ;
though perhaps to others it may not have the same
appearance." Boscovich's epigram on the planets had
come true in the case of these astronomers —

"'Twixt Mars and Venus as this globe was hurled,
'Tis plain that love and war must rule the world."

Schroeter attacks Herschel for misrepresenting, or, on
insuflBicient grounds, rejecting his views. Herschel
appears not to have retorted any more than he did
when attacked elsewhere by others. It was wise;
but he found that the Lady Venus may be as much
a source of quarrel, when she walks in unsurpassed
brightness among the stars, as when she awakens the
feelings of mortal hearts on earth.

As this was the only scientific quarrel in Herschel's
life, it is worth while to show how small it was. Far
dififerent were the quarrels which caused annoyance

I70 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

and grief to the friends of Newton, Hooke, Flamsteed,
Leibnitz, Bernoulli, Laplace, and which render their
lives sometimes most unpleasant reading. A quarrel
for the maintenance of truth and right is a necessity
of life in a world, where falsehood and wrong seem
often to have the best of it ; but the meannesses and
selfishness of scientific quarrels have little or nothing
of this nobility about them. "The result of my
observations would have been communicated long
ago," Herschel wrote for the Royal Society, " if I had
not still flattered myself with the hopes of some better
success, concerning the diurnal motion of Venus;
which, on acccount of the density of the atmosphere
of this planet, has still eluded my constant attention
as far as concerns its period and direction. Even at
the present time I should hesitate to give the following
extract from my journals, if it did not seem incumbent
on me to examine by what accident I came to overlook
mountains in this planet, which are said to be of such
enormous height, as to exceed four, five, and even six
times the perpendicular elevation of Cimbora5a, the
highest of our mountains. The same paper which
contains the lines I have quoted, gives us likewise
many extraordinary accounts, equally wonderful : such
as hints of the various and singular properties of the
atmosphere of Saturn." Then he proceeds to speak of
Schroeter's measures as " defective " ; the mirror of the
7-f eet reflector used as " considerably tarnished " ; and
the "calculations (as) so full of inaccuracies, that it would
be necessary to go over them again." The Lilienthal
observer did not like this plain speaking.

To these somewhat sharp, but perhaps deserved
criticisms, Schroeter replied in 1796. ^* Though it is a

SCIENTIFIC QUARRELS 171

satisfaction to me that Dr. Herschel last year found
my discovery of the morning and evening twilight of
Venus's atmosphere to be confirmed, as I could not
hope to have obtained such an important confirmation
so early, considering the excellent telescopes required,
and that a favourable opportunity for such observations
occurs but seldom : yet the paper on the planet Venus,
which this great observer has inserted in the PhiL
Trans, for 1793, contains unreserved assertions, which
may be easily injurious to the truth, for the very
reason that they have truth for their object, and yet
rest on no suflScient foundation." And Schroeter then
endeavours to show that Herschel's paper contains
misrepresentations or unsatisfactory proof of mistakes
committed by him.

It was a small quarrel at the worst, in which these
two friends engaged, a very different quarrel from the
disputes and angry encounters that disgraced Leibnitz,
and Bernoulli, and Flamsteed, and did not leave
Newton altogether unscathed. Schroeter had perhaps
the best of it. His mountains, twenty or twenty-three
miles high on the surface of Venus, may be a myth,
but there is no doubt that his measure of the length of
her day, 23^ 21™, is somewhat grudgingly accepted by
Herschel, while his estimate of the size of Venus, as
rather less than the earth, is preferred to HerscheFs,
who believed he had proved Venus to be a little larger
than the earth. At the same time it must be admitted
that Herschel had sometimes cause to complain.
Writing of one astronomer in 1799, he says, "the same
author's account of my double stars is extremely
erroneous."

As early as 1777, while toiling at the daily work of

172 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

a musician in Bath, Herschel " found that the poles of
Mars were distinguished with remarkable luminous
spots." He believed that, by observing them carefully,
he might secure a key to a knowledge of the planet,
and its history, the length of its day, its atmosphere,
its seasons. These observations were continued during
six or seven years. Sometimes he saw a well-marked
lucid spot on Mars : " it is its south pole, for it remains
in the same place, while the dark equatorial spots
perform their constant gyrations : it is nearly circular."
It was not only circular; "it was very brilliant and
white." At other times he saw also another "lucid
spot" at the planet's north pole. Occasionally both
spots were seen, but the one was " thicker," or " much
thicker," than the other, while the thinner was, or
seemed to be, longer. After six years of watching he
writes, " The white polar spot increases in size ; it is
very luminous." The conclusions he drew from these
notes in his journal, and from his calculations to
ascertain the seasons on Mars, must have been listened
to by those iv^ho first heard them read as if they were
a page or two from a romance by Fielding or Smollett.
We give them in Herschel's own words.

" The analogy between Mars and the earth is, perhaps,
by far the greatest in the whole solar system. ... If
then we find that the globe we inhabit has its polar
regions frozen and covered with mountains of ice and
snow, that only partly melt when alternately exposed
to the sun, I may well be permitted to surmise that
the same causes may probably have the same effect on
the globe of Mars; that the bright polar spots are
owing to the vivid reflection of light from frozen
regions ; and that the reduction of those spots is to be

POLAR SPOTS ON MARS 173

ascribed to their being exposed to the sun. In the
year 1781 the south polar spot was extremely large,
which we might well expect, since that pole had but
lately been involved in a whole twelvemonth's dark-
ness and absence of the sun; but in 1783 I found it
considerably smaller than before, and it decreased
continually from the 20th of May till about the
middle of September, when it seemed to be at a
stand. During this last period the south pole had
already been above eight months enjoying the benefit
of summer, and still continued to receive the sunbeams ;
though, towards the latter end, in such an oblique
direction as to be but little benefited by them. On
the other hand, in the year 1781, the north polar spot,
which had then been its twelvemonth in the sunshine,
and was but lately returning to darkness, appeared
small, though undoubtedly increasing in size." The
length of the year in Mars is nearly two of our years,
and the distance from us varies from about 230 to 50
millions of miles.

Astronomers, previous to Herschers time, had found
that Mars was surrounded by an atmosphere like the
earth. One of them, Cassini, seems to have suspected
the existence of an atmosphere of great density, and
rising to a height of about 70,000 miles above the
planet's surface.^ Herschel used the same means as
Cassini to determine the height of the atmosphere of
Mars by watching the fading or going out of starlight,
when a star came up to its limb. At a distance of
30,000 miles there was no indication of an atmosphere.
" It appears, however, that the planet is not without a

^ Thirty-six semi-diameters of the planet. The atmosphere of the
earth is now supposed to be about 500 miles in height.

174 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

considerable atmosphere. For besides the permanent
spots on its surface, I have often noticed," he says,
"occasional changes of partial bright belts and also
once a darkish one in a pretty high latitude. And
these alterations we can hardly ascribe to any other
cause than the variable disposition of clouds and
vapours floating in the atmosphere of that planet."
From the fact that the dark belts or spots and the
red colour of Mars manifestly belong to the surface of
the planet, we may accept Herschel's idea "that its
inhabitants probably enjoy a situation in many respects
similar to ours." It has been shown in our own day
that the vapour of water, and with that we may
associate clouds, is present in the atmosphere of Mars.
But there is reason to believe that the atmosphere of
Mars is comparatively rare.

Jupiter was not one of the planets from which
Herschel reaped an ungathered harvest. The field
had been so thoroughly worked by others in searching
for a method of easily discovering the longitude at
sea, that it does not seem to have presented the same
attractions to him as other planets did. A paper
which he wrote on Jupiter in 1797 — and he wrote no
other — gives many curious quotations from his journal
regarding the planet and its satellites. So minute are
the discoveries made of change of colour and apparent
size of the satellites that if the Red spot, detected on
the planet in 1878, had been visible in his day, he
could scarcely have failed to see it. The bands or
belts on the body of the planet, the white and dark
spots they showed, the length of day they indicated,
and the rotation of the four satellites round their
primary were the principal points attended to by

JUPITER, SATURN 175

him. The results he arrived at were very near the
reality.

Time of rotation of Jupiter on his axis ^ —

Herschel.

Time of revolution in its orbit of —

H. M. S.

9 55 49

D. H. M. D. H. M. S.

First satellite . . . 1 18 26*6 1 18 27 34

Second satellite . . . 3 18 17-9 3 13 13 42

Third satellite . ..73 59*6 7 3 42 33

Fourth satellite . . . 16 18 5-1 16 16 32 11

If the white spots on the belts were connected with
drifting masses in Jupiter's atmosphere, they would
drift as well as rotate. Herschel was aware of this,
and, since his day, the amount of drift has been
estimated at 270 miles an hour in the same direction
as the rotation. In other words, they would take
42 days to go round the planet from this cause
alone. Herschel was also persuaded that the four
satellites revolve on their axes in the same period as
they revolve round Jupiter, resembling in this respect
our moon. Laplace was disposed to accept this
conclusion.^

For more than a century and a half the planet
Saturn had been the object and, it may be said, the
despair of every astronomer's curiosity, mainly in
consequence of the ring which the telescope had
shown it to possess, and the singular shapes the
ring was found to assume. Five moons were also
discovered to be circling round the planet, and

^ The great red spot gives 9 h. 65 m. 34 s.
* System of the Worlds Bk. I. chs. viii. vii.

176 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

Messier, viewing the planet in 1766 with what he calls
"an achromatic reflector of 10 feet 7 inches focus,"
" perceived on his globe two darkish belts, extremely
faint and difficult to be discerned, directed, however,
in a right line parallel to the longest diameter of the
ring."^ However, till Herschel applied his 40 -feet
reflector to its system, discovery may be said to have
reached its limits. To " the liberal support, whereby
our most benevolent King has enabled his humble
astronomer to complete the arduous undertaking of
constructing this instrument," Herschel writes, was
due the discovery of other two moons or satellites, a
fuller knowledge of the nature of the ring, and, in
short, a new era in our knowledge of that wonderful
system. An object so engaging drew Herschel's
attention as early as the spring of 1774, long before
he was known to fame. On the I7th of March that
year, with a 5 J-feet reflector, he saw the ring " reduced
to a very minute line," and the planet looking like a
ball with a knitting-needle projecting through it on
both sides. About a fortnight after, the ends of this
axis had vanished, and a dark band or shadow crossed
the planet's equator from side to side. In the follow-
ing year he saw the ring gradually open out, with a
" dark zone contained between two concentric circles,"
as if there were two rings with an open space between
them. For ten years he continued watching the planet
with telescopes of various powers, suspicious that it
had not told astronomers all the story of its ring and
satellitea The ten years' watch lengthened out to
twenty, and the twenty to thirty or more, but this
eager watcher still kept guard, ready to take advan-

1 PUL Trans., 1769., vol. lix. p. 459.

SEVENTH MOON OF SATURN 177

tage of the slightest lifting of the curtain which con-
cealed a world of wonders from view.

As soon as his great mirror was finished, he turned
it on Saturn, and " the very first moment he saw the
planet, on August 28, 1789," he was presented with a
view of six of its satellites, " in such a situation and so
bright as rendered it impossible to mistake them or
not to see them." Five of these satellites had been
known for more than a century: a sixth was thus
added. Constantly continuing his watch on the planet,
he was rewarded, three weeks after, with discovering
a seventh so close to the planet that the telescopes,
previously in use, had failed to find it.^ Even in his
great mirror " it appeared no bigger than a very small
lucid point," and it lies so near the planet and its ring
that " except in very fine weather, it cannot easily be
seen well enough to take its place with accuracy."
But he learned from experience, and taught others the
lesson, that it is easier to find a small body which has
been once seen, and whose place has been marked,
than to detect it for the first time amid a crowd of
other heavenly bodies.^ The heavens teach wisdom
even in the littlest things, but the lessons they teach
are sometimes forgotten as soon as learned. He found
also that the time of a sidereal revolution round the
planet is 22 hours, 37 minutes, 22 seconds. Both it
and the other moon he discovered revolve so near and
so parallel to the ring, that he had " repeatedly seen

1 One discovered by Huyghens in 1655, and four by Cassini in 1671
and onwards.

^ Compare the ease with which observers detected the smaU companion
of Sirios, and the ** crape " ring of Saturn after they were once detected
(Ball, Story of the Hecmns, p. 887).
12

178 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

them run along its very minute arms " at the rate of
9 or 10 miles a second! He was looking from
Windsor across a gulf in space about nine hundred
millions of miles in width. It was a romance of the
heavens — one of many.

On ascertaining that his great telescope was not
required for these observations on the ring and moons
of Saturn, he "made ten new object specula and
fourteen small plain ones for his 7 -feet reflector,
having already found that the maximum of distinct-
ness might be much easier obtained than where large
apertures are concerned." During his long-continued
watch of Saturn he saw sometimes a northern belt on
the body of the planet, sometimes two belts at the
equator. In a couple of days the entry in his journal
became " a bright belt over a dark one " ; and, nine
days later, " one dark and one very faint white belt."
The last entry he quotes in 1790 is, "The bright belt
close to the ring and two dark equatorial belts."
These belts would be about one hundred thousand
miles in length: what were they? Similar belts or
bands had long been seen and studied on the planet
Jupiter. It was agreed among observers that they
were probably due to cloudy masses floating in
Jupiter's atmosphere. If the same explanation hold
for the belts of Saturn, the changes, seen on them
by Herschel, would be explained by "a very con-
siderable atmosphere," in which they take place. He
not only adopted this conclusion, but confirmed it by
another observation. When the two nearest of the
moons — the two he discovered in 1789 — came, in their
progress round the planet, to the edge of the disc,
they did not disappear at once, but continued "to

SATURN'S MOONS AND BELTS 179

hang to the disk a long while before they would
vanisL" The seventh or innermost (Mimas) thus
hung on the disc for twenty minutes, and the sixth
for fourteen or fifteen. Had there been no atmosphere,
both of the moons would have been at once hid behind
the planet. This takes place when a star comes up to
our moon, and vanishes behind it. The star is seen to
go out at once ; and the conclusion drawn is that this
could not happen unless there were no atmosphere or
very little of it in the moon to keep the star in sight
for us after it had really vanished. Our atmosphere
gives us twilight, morning and evenmg, and enables
us to see the sun some minutes before he rises, and
for as long after he has set. Ultimately Herschel
perceived a quintuple belt, two dark and three bright,
on Saturn. Sometimes also he noticed a whitish light
at the poles similar to the polar spots on Mars, and
due, he believed, to the same cause. But what these
belts really are is a problem still unsolved. The vast
body of Saturn is lighter than the same volume of
water, and would float in it like cork. Our earth is
about five times heavier than a globe of water of the
same size, and would sink in water like lead. Whether
Saturn is still a heated mass, slowly cooling down, and
these clouds arise from streams of gas given ofi*, remain
problems for the future to solve.

With improved mirrors and a less powerful tele-
scope, he watched the movements and changes of the
ring. Between 1790 and 1806 he wrote seven papers
for the Royal Society on Saturn and his system.
Slowly he came to the conclusion, which he dismissed
at first as improbable, that the ring was not single, but
double, with a gulf twenty-five hundred miles [1680] in

i8o HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

width between the two parts.^ The black disc or belt was
not in the middle of the ring's breadth. " It is a zone
of considerable breadth," which was always seen per-
manently in the same place. As it was not, what some
seem to have supposed, the shadow of a vast range of
mountains on the ring's surface, he resolved to wait
till the planet came into a position which would enable
him to see the stars through the black belt, if it really
were a division in the ring, a window, as it were,
through which he could look out into space beyond.
He does not appear to have been successful in this
quest, and it has not been done by others. That there
were two unequal rings,^ separated by this black line,
he was satisfied. They were bright rings, but the
inner was the brighter of the two. Near the outer
edge of the outer ring, he observed and figured "a
black list," fainter than the dividing gulf. He did not
consider it a division in the outer ring, but it is now
a recognised feature, traceable all round. Herschel also

^ The dimensions of Saturn and his rings are, according to Proctor
(Sncyc. Brit,y "Astronomy," p. 783)—

Diameter of the planet . . . 70,136 miles.

Between planet and " crape " ring . 9,760

Breadth of " crape " ring . . 8,660

,, of inner bright ring . . 17,605 ,,

„ of division between bright rings 1,680 ,,

„ of outer bright ring . . 9,625 ,,

The diameter of the ring system is thus about 165,000 miles. Herschel
made it about (204,883) 205,000 miles in diameter. He believed that
the breadth of the ring is to the space between the ring and the planet
as 5 to 4 {PhU, Trcms,, 1806, p. 463). If the "crape" be left out of
account in measuring the ring, the proportion is about 5 to 3*2 {Phil.
Trcms, for 1792). He estimates the vacant space between the outer
and inner rings at nearly 2513 miles.

" In the proportion of 805 to 280, while the space between was
reckoned 115.

THE RING i8i

saw the edge of the ring as a thin rim of light, and, from
some spots seen on it, inferred that it rotated round the
planet in 10 hours, 32 minutes, 15 seconds. The planet
itself revolves in 10 hours, 14 minutes, 23 seconds.

Highly interesting was the story thus told by the
planet ; but Herschel wrung from it other details.
He suspected that an eighth satellite existed, but it
was reserved for others to discover an eighth, and, it is
now said, a ninth, at great distances from the planet.
But the rings continued to be a puzzle, which baffled
solution. He observed lucid points, different from the
satellites, coming between the ring and his eye, and
moving along it in their orbits. If they were not
satellites, what were they ? He was not mistaken in
"the frequent appearance of protuberant and lucid
points on the arms of the ring of Saturn." They were
realities, not illusions, not an enchantment lent by the
vast distance at which he saw them. " Many of these
bright points," he writes, " were completely accounted
for by the calculated places of the satellites " ; but
there were many more which remained inexplicable.
He could not entertain the idea that these points
" would denote immense mountains of elevated sur-
face." He rather inclined to the belief that the ring
was in a state of rotation roimd the planet, and that
one at least of the shining spots might be a moon
bedded in or somehow connected with the ring, float-
ing, it might be, in a fluid like water, or running in
" a notch, groove or division of the ring to suffer the
satellite to pass along." He was perhaps not far from
the truth in these romantic imaginings. But the light
of the ring is generally brighter than that of the
planet, and he even imagined that the shining spots

1 82 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

may owe " their existence to inherent fires acting with
great violence." " Nay, we have pretty good reason to
believe," he said, " that probably all the planets emit
light in some degree ; for the illumination which re-
mains on the moon in a total eclipse cannot be entirely
ascribed to the light which may reach it by the refrac-
tion of the earth's atmosphere." This idea is not
borne out by recent observations.

The first two papers Herschel wrote on Saturn, con-
taining the record of more than fourteen years' work,
cover nearly ninety pages quarto. Fifty of these pages
are merely extracts from his journal, showing the
nightly work in which he was engaged, jottings, it
may be, all of which required from him time and care,
before they could be put down on paper. Here is a
specimen of two nights' work, done shortly before
midnight :—

" Nov. 7 : 22, 9. At the end of the p. arm is a place
that is brighter than nearer to the body.

" 23, 12. The preceding arm has still the appearance
of a small protuberant point towards the south, near
the end of the arm.

" Nov. 8 : 23; 40. There is a protuberant point on the
preceding arm besides the 7th sat. ; so that at present
I cannot tell whether the satellite be the nearest or
farthest of them." ^

By patient, long-continued labour, carried on at all
hours of the day and night, is a way prepared for
advancing the boundaries of human knowledge, though
few are capable of estimating, far less of bearing, the

1 Phil Trams,, 1790, p. 485 (voL Ixxx.). The seventh and sixth,
though last discovered, are nearest to the planet. The longer-known
five used to be named in the order of their distance from it.

SUBDIVISIONS OF THE RING 183

cost in time and comfort, by the sacrifice of which it is
purchased for mankind.

That Herschel was surprised by the brightness of
the rings, the greater brightness of the shining points
he saw on them, and the yellowish light of the planet,
is quite clear. Whether he ever suspected a light or
phosphorescence of its own in the system of Saturn, as
some observers have now come to think exists, is
another matter. But he was on the threshold of that
discovery, if discovery it be. He entertained no such
idea in 1789 when he classed all the planets " under
one general definition, of bodies not luminous in them-
selves," though two years of farther reflection and
observation may have wrought a change in a man of
his clear perception and quickness. On another view
developed since his day he almost anticipated recent
research. He denied that the ring was subdivided by
many dark lines into a series of concentric rings, " as
has been represented in divers treatises of astronomy."
He firmly held to only one division ; but he was not
far from the modem view, which represents the ring
as a mighty mass of revolving satellites, kept in posi-
tion by the gravity of the planet and the velocity of
their rotation round him.

Herschel's memoirs on Saturn cover about one
hundred and seventy pages quarto, and the plates that
accompany them give a distinct idea of what he saw.
By comparing letterpress and plate we may better
understand the relation in which he stood to his fol-
lowers in this field of research and discovery. With
one of the new specula, which he ground apparently for
the purpose of observing the ring of Saturn more care-
fully, he got views that he speaks of as " uncommonly

1 84 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

distinct." Of these views he writes : " The outer ring
is less bright than the inner ring. The inner ring is
very bright close to the dividing space, and at about
half its breadth it begins to change colour, gradually
growing fainter, and just upon the inner edge it is
almost of the colour of the dark part of the quintuple
belt." ^ A little after he adds : " The shadow of the
ring upon Saturn, on each side, is bent a little south-
wards, so that the apparent curve it makes departs a
little from the ring." Looking at these singular com-
panions of the planet across a gulf eight or nine
hundred millions of miles wide, it is not surprising
that an astronomer prays for "light, more light," to
resolve this puzzle of the bright and the dark. It is
only an outline of the ring, at the best, that we can
expect to obtain from the most careful drawings. But
what Herschel did not suspect or imagine about the
ring, it would be natural for him to confound with,
other features that took a greater hold of his fancy.
Of the inner ring he says : " At about half its breadth
it begins to change colour," that is, it passes from
" very bright " to the darkness of the quintuple belt.
Now this was said of the ring as seen and figured in
1794. Compare it with the three rings in the three
figures shown in 1792. They are unlike that of 1794.
Either the ring had changed, or Herschel was in 1794
looking on two inner rings, a bright or very bright
ring, and a dark. This was Professor Bond's discovery
in 1850, " a crape ring " half the breadth of the very
bright inner ring, between it and the body of the
planet. There are thus three well-marked rings in
the system of Saturn, a somewhat dark outer, a very

1 Phil Trans., 1794, pp. 54, 67.

MR. SIXTH REDISCOVERED 185

bright inner, and a "crape" or slate - coloured ring
nearer still to the planet. Did Herschel not see and
figure all three, only failing to observe the interval
between the very bright and the " crape " ring ? We
can only express our surprise if one so quick of eye,
and so careful to observe, ascribed to the bright ring
in 1794, what he did not see or delineate on it in 1792,
if the " crape " existed then as it exists now.

Fifty years after. Sir John Herschel, when at the
Cape of Good Hope, made a careful search for the two
moons discovered by his illustrious father. He had
all but given it up in despair when, looking for the
other five " with the 20-f eet reflector," which he took
with him to South Africa, " and a polished new mirror,
there stood Mr. Sixth ! . . . Next night it was kept in
view long enough for Saturn to have left it behind by
its own motion, had it been a star. ... So this is
at last a thing made out," he writes. "As for No.
Seven, I have no hope of ever seeing it."

Since HerscheFs time the minds of men have become
familiar with strings of meteorites, millions of miles in
length, through which our earth plunges in its yearly
journey round the sun. If they form, or come in time
to form, a continuous ring about the sun, one hundred
thousand miles in breadth, we may have on a vastly
larger scale a parallel to the rings of Saturn. The
breadth of the latter is only about one-third of the
breadth of one well-known stream of meteors, and
their length is not a quarter of a million of miles. If
then these rings of the planet are similarly composed
of separate masses, great and small, and are not con-
tinuous rings, perhaps 250 miles in thickness, a satellite
" floating in a fluid like water, or running in a notch,

1 86 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

groove or division of the ring," while it ceases to be a
fanciful, becomes also an unnecessary conception.

Such are the main features of the romance of Saturn
since Herschel began his study of it one hundred and
twenty-five years ago. In the hundred and twenty-
five years that preceded, there had also been mystery
and romance about the planet and his ring. All the
riddles presented by this system have not been yet
read, and it is likely that, when improvements in tele-
scopes or observation enable man to read the riddles
that face him to-day, they will raise new riddles and
give birth to other romances for the amazement or
delight of future ages. On one point science is still in
doubt. Does the fifth satellite of Saturn, like our
moon, always show the same face to the planet, or, in
other words, turn on its axis in the same time that it
takes to revolve round him ? Herschel believed he
had proved, or almost proved, that it " turns once on
its axis, exactly in the time it performs one revolution
round its primary planet."

It was only fitting that the discoverer of Uranus
should pay special attention to that planet : but five or
six years elapsed before his patient watchfulness was
crowned with any success. Unlike Jupiter and Saturn,
the light of Uranus is very faint. He does not invite
pursuit ; he flies from it into darkness : and the light
of his moons is fainter still. Herschel suspected, per-
haps hoped, that if he searched for satellites he would
find them. And so he did. On January 11, 1787, he
saw " some very faint stars " near the planet, " whose
places he noted down with great care." Next evening
two of them were missing. As the haziness, that was
about, might have caused their disappearance, he noted

TITANIA AND OBERON REDISCOVERED 187

"all the small stars near the planet the 14th, 17th,
18th, 24th of January, and the 4th and 5th of
February." On the 7th of February he kept one
star in view for nine hours, from six in the evening
till three next morning. His journal records that he
saw it " faithfully attend its primary planet." On the
second night after, he was so satisfied of having caught
sight of a second moon, that he delineated on paper
what he expected to see the following evening. And
he saw in the clear heavens what he sketched sixteen
or seventeen hundred million of miles away, " The
Georgian Planet, attended by two satellites." Oberon
and Titania are the fairy names by which they are
now known. "I confess," he adds, "that this scene
appeared to me with additional beauty, as the little
secondary planets seemed to give a dignity to the
primary one, which raises it into a more conspicuous
situation among the great bodies of our system. For
upwards of five hours I saw them go on together,
each pursuing its own track." It was the heroic age
of astronomical research. A hero there and a hero
here were wrestling with difficulties and winning
triumphs in the world of stars. They were men of
extraordinary skill and unwearied endurance. It was
nearly fifty years after their discovery before the fairies,
Oberon and Titania, again condescended to show them-
selves to a mortal, the son of their discoverer.^ And
it enabled his aunt, then ninety years of age, to write :
" These folks would not have called the Herschelian
construction useless, if they had seen the struggle,
during the years from 1781 to '86, to get a sight of

^ Holden, Life wnd Works of W, H., p. 143. But see Caroline's
MemoirSf pp. 261, 305.

1 88 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

the satellites of the Georgium Sidus, when, after
throwing aside the speculum, they stood broad before
us."

From observations continued on Uranus for fifteen
years, Herschel first suspected, and then became con-
vinced that other satellites besides the two, which he
discovered in 1787, attend the planet on its journey
round the sun. It was labour of love not lost, or
grudgingly given, but the fruits it yielded were Dead
Sea apples with a fair outside and rottenness within.
He believed he saw other four moons circling round
Uranus apparently in an opposite direction to other
planets, that is, from east to west, not from west to
east. He also suspected that it had a ring round it,
or two rings; then he gave up the idea; then he
entered in his journal, " When the satellites are best in
focus, the suspicion of a ring is the strongest"; and
nine months after he adds, " The planet is not round,
and I have not much doubt but that it has a ring."
He used " successively powers rising from 240 to 2400,"
more than two years after, " without any suspicion of
a ring." A fortnight later he tried magnifying powers
of 2400 and 4800. In conclusion he believed in the
four new satellites, but gave the ring up. A traveller
in unexplored regions of the heavens may thus be as
much the victim of a mirage as a wanderer in the
thirsty deserts of earth. But a singular thing was
observed: these moons of Uranus became invisible
when they approached the planet, which those of
Jupiter and Saturn never did till the planet got be-
tween them and us. What was the reason ?

The cause is in the eye of the observer himself. It
requires to adapt itself to the light which falls on the

SENSIBILITY OF THE EYE 189

retina. Now "the planet is very faint; and the in-
fluence of its feeble light cannot extend far with any
degree of equality. This enables us to see the faintest
objects, even when they are only a minute or two
removed from it. The satellites are very nearly the
dimmest objects that can be seen in the heavens; so
that they cannot bear any considerable diminution of
their light, by a contrast with a more luminous object,
without becoming invisible. If then the sphere of
illumination of our new planet be limited to 18" or
20", we may fully account for the loss of the satellites
when they come within its reach ; for they have very
little light to lose, and lose it pretty suddenly." This
view of a weak light extinguishing a weaker, though
a commonplace now, received a very poetical inter-
pretation in a paper written by Herschel three years
after. " This increased sensibility," he says, " was such,
that if a star of the 3rd magnitude came towards the
field of view, I found it necessary to withdraw the eye
before its entrance, in order not to injure the delicacjf'
of vision acquired by long continuance in the dark.
The transit of large stars, unless where none of the
6th or 7th magnitude could be had, has generally
been declined in my sweeps, even with the 20-feet
telescope. And I remember, that after a considerable
sweep with the 40-f eet instrument, the appearance of
Sinus announced itself, at a great distance, like the
dawn of the morning, and came on by degrees, in-
creasing in brightness, till this brilliant star at last
entered the field of view of the telescope, with all the
splendour of the rising sun, and forced me to take the
eye from that beautiful sight." To increase this sen-
sibility of the eye he was on these occasions in the

I90 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

habit of excluding light from surrounding objects by
wearing a black hood.

Herschel was not content with wresting from Uranus
this novel part of his story. He continued to watch
the planet. Unfortunately, the same success did not
crown his efforts to read its history. A great number
of observations on imaginary rings and supposed
moons, that were found to be stars, or not moons but
probably moving, planetary bodies of the asteroid
nature, demanded his attention, and deceived his
hopes. It was such a tantalising pursuit, that even
"the direction of a current of air alone may affect
vision." At last he came to the conclusion that no
ring, similar to Saturn's, girdles Uranus; but that,
certainly, four additional satellites accompany him on
his long journey of eighty-four years round the sun.
Astronomers who came after his time failed to find
these four moons, but, later still, two satellites have
been added to the original two discovered by Herschel.
One of the additions is suspected to belong to the four
he believed he had seen circling round the planet. Of
the four recognised satellites the most distant, Oberon,
performs its round in 13*46 days, or, as Herschel
found, 13 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes, 1 J seconds. Other
information, which by careful watching he wrung
from Uranus, has been verified or corrected by those
who came after him ; but to this unwearied observer
belongs the credit of showing that the two satellites
he discovered, unlike other members of the solar
system, revolve in orbits nearly at right angles to
the ecliptic, and that their course is retrograde, or
from east to west, not direct, that is, from west
to east. These were two singular and outstanding

THE ASTEROIDS 191

discoveries made by Herschel in the system of
Uranus.

The two small planets, Ceres and Pallas, discovered
in 1801 and 1807, have strangely given the tooth of
envy an opportunity of wounding the good name of
Herschel. As he found their discs like those of fixed
stars, spurious and not measurable; as they "re-
sembled small stars so much as hardly to be distin-
guished from them even by very good telescopes," as
he imagined them from the haziness he saw around
them to be " comets in disguise," he considered planet
a misnomer as applied to them, and proposed to call
them asteroids. Strange to say, the friend of Piazzi
and Olbers, who discovered these small bodies, was
charged with intending, by the suggestion of this
diminutive, to cast a slight on the achievement of his
friends, in comparison with his own glory as the dis-
coverer of the great planet, Uranus. A more stupid
slander of a most generous heart could scarcely be
imagined. He predicted that the association of astro-
nomers which had been formed on the Continent to
hunt for more of them would be successful: "Many
may soon be discovered," he informed the Royal Society.
Two were caught within the next five years, Juno and
Vesta, but the " many " foretold by Herschel in 1802
remained an unfulfilled prediction for more than forty
years. He himself joined in the hunt, and failed : " I
have already made five reviews of the Zodiac without
detecting any of these concealed objects." Yet he was
slandered as envious of the fame of others who had
done what he confessed he had failed in doing,^ although
in 1813 he told Thomas Campbell, the poet, that " there

^ Phil. Traihs. for 1802, pp. 228-30.

192 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

will be thousands — perhaps thirty thousand more — yet
discovered." The discovery of the fourth, called Vesta,
he pronounced " an event of such consequence " as to
" engage his immediate attention." He called it " a valu-
able addition to our increasing catalogue of asteroids " ;
and he spoke of the " celebrated discoverers " as in-
ducing " us to hope that some farther light may soon
be thrown upon this new and most interesting branch
of astronomy." ^ Dr. Olbers himself wrote to Herschel
that Vesta " was not to be distinguished from a fixed
star " ; ^ while Schroeter, the countryman and neighbour
of Olbers, had already communicated a paper to the
Royal Society in which he said : ^ " Its image was, with-
out the least difference, that of a fixed star of the 6th
magnitude with an intense radiating light; so that
this new planet may with the greatest propriety be
called an asteroid" That one scientific man should
attack, or rather slander, another for giving to these
small bodies a scientifically appropriate name, on the
ground that he thereby intended to derogate from the
credit of his own friends, whom he publicly extolled as
" celebrated discoverers," seems incredible. Yet it was
done.

By a most ingenious contrivance he managed to
obtain approximate values for the diameters of Ceres
and Pallas. The former he found to be 161*6 miles ;
the latter smaller, 147 or 110 J miles. So small is
Pallas that it would require many thousands equally
small to make up a planet no larger than Mercury.
The colour of Ceres he found to be " ruddy, but not
very deep " ; that of Pallas, " milky whitish."

1 Letter from Dr. Olbers, April 20, 1807.

a Phil. Trans., 1807, p. 260. » Phil. Trans., May 28, 1807, p. 246.

COMETS 193

In 1807 Herschel concluded one of his papers in
these words: "I find that out of the sixteen comets
which I have examined, fourteen have been without
any visible solid body in their centre, and that the
other two had a very ill-defined small central light,
which might perhaps be called a nucleus, but did not
deserve the name of a disk." In the end of September
that year a comet was discovered by Mr. Pigott, to
which Herschel at once turned his attention in the
hope of wresting from it information regarding its
nature. By careful observations, continued over five
months, he felt himself warranted in claiming for it
" a visible, round and well-defined disk," 538 miles in
diameter, and " shining in every part of it with equal
brightness." He came also to the conclusion "that
the body of the comet on its surface is self-luminous,
from whatever cause this quality may be derived."
He inferred besides that " the changes in the brightness
of the small stars, when they are successively immerged
in the tail or coma of the comet, or cleared from them,
prove evidently, that they are suflSciently dense to
obstruct the free passage of star-light." The tail of
this comet, three weeks after its discovery, was more
than nine millions of miles in length, and Herschel
was inclined to think that it "consisted of radiant
matter, such as, for instance, the aurora borealis." It
was not bifid or split in two, as that of the comet of 1769
had been, but it presented a peculiarity seen also in others
of these bodies : " The south-preceding side, in all its
length, except towards the end, is very well defined :
but thenorth-f oUowing side is everywhere hazy and irre-
gular, especially towards the end; it is also shorter than
the south-preceding one, . . . even to the naked eye,"

13

194 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

If Herschel had not known this body to be a comet,
he would have described its head, as "a very large,
brilliant, round nebula, suddenly much brighter in the
middle." He says that he would have added, "The
centre of it might consist of very small stars." So
struck was he with this singular idea that he directed
a telescope "with a high power to the comet." He
then saw "several small stars shining through the
nebulosity of the coma." The terror which once sur-
rounded the appearance of these bodies in the heavens
is gone ; the awe remains, and, as knowledge increases,
the mysteries that attend their birth, their growth,
their flight through space, have become greater and
more wonderful problems awaiting solution.

CHAPTER XI

HEBSCHEL'S ENGLISH HOME

So long as Herschers house was conducted by his
sister Caroline, it could scarcely be called an English
home. To all intents and purposes it was a German
household, ruled by a German mistress, and conducted
according to German ways. When he married the
widow of a London merchant, Mrs. Pitt, his sister, who
had been for some time kept unusually busy with
papers and calculations, wrote, as she was withdrawing
from this household management, "It may easily be
supposed that I must have been fully employed (be-
sides minding the heavens) to prepare everything as
well as I could against the time I was to give up the
place of a housekeeper, which was the eighth of May,
1788." She continued to mind the heavens; but she
had a good deal also to do with the earth.

Of the lady to whom Herschel was married, of him-
self, and of his sister we have excellent word-pictures,
drawn by Miss Bumey and her father. Caroline, who
for fourteen years had devoted her life to her brother's
studies, and who continued to show the same devotion
for sixty more, though resigning the post of house-
keeper, remained to help him in his pursuits and to
watch over his health. Reading the brief entries in
her diary, we cannot help concluding that in many

196 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

respects she was the real, but not the nominal head of
that centre of activity and discovery. When Dr.
Bumey called on Herschel in 1798, ten years after
his marriage with Mrs. Pitt, to consult him about his
great poem on astronomy and astronomers, he was
surprised to find Mrs. Herschel, and not her sister-in-
law Caroline, at the head of the table, while a merry
little son of six, afterwards Sir John Herschel, amused
him and the rest of the company. Dr. Bumey did not
know that his friend William Herschel was married.
Even in 1817, another visitor. Dr. Niemeyer, was
equally ignorant. These are proofs of the gentle, re-
tiring nature of the wife, to which Herschel's friends
bear witness, and of the overshadowing celebrity to
which his sister had attained. From all quarters we
learn that it was as pleasant a home as it was a famous
observatory.

Miss Bumey, the famous authoress of JSvdina, who
accepted the post of assistant wardrobe keeper to the
Queen in Windsor Castle at £200 a year, when she
might have earned ten times that amount by her pen,
and retained her independence besides, may possibly
have had a fellow-feeling with Herschel, who was
condemned, as she was, to bear heavy burdens from
the etiquette of a court. Her picture of him is every
way delightful ; his wife comes in for a briefer notice
and for less praise. At a tea-party and concert in
Windsor she met them both, five months after their
marriage. " Two young ladies were to perform," she
says, " in a little concert. Dr. Herschel was there, and
accompanied them very sweetly on the violin; his
new-married wife was with him, and his sister. His
wife seems good-natured ; she was rich, too ! and astro-

MISS BURNEY ON HERSCHEL 197

nomers are as able as other men to discern that gold
can glitter as well as stars." ^ There is a falling-off
here from the enthusiasm of former days: a great
falling-off.

Two years previous Miss Bumey described Herschel,
or her first impressions of him, in much more glowing
terms. " In the evening Mr. Herschel came to tea. I
had once seen that very extraordinary man at Mrs.
De Luc's, but was happy to see him again, for he has
not more fame to awaken curiosity than sense and
modesty to gratify it. He is perfectly unassuming,
yet openly happy, and happy in the success of those
studies which would render a mind less excellently
formed presumptuous and arrogant.

" The King has not a happier subject than this man,
who owes it wholly to His Majesty that he is not
wretched ; for such was his eagerness to quit all other
pursuits to follow astronomy solely, that he was in
danger of ruin, when his talents and great and un-
common genius attracted the King's patronage. He
has now not only his pension, which gives him the
felicity of devoting all his time to his darling study,
but he is indulged in license from the King to make a
telescope according to his new ideas and discoveries,
that is, to have no cost spared in its construction, and
is wholly to be paid for by His Majesty.

" This seems to have made him happier even than
the pension, as it enables him to put in execution all
his wonderful projects, from which his expectations of
future discoveries are so sanguine as to make his
present existence a state of almost perfect enjoyment.

" He seems a man without a wish that has its object

1 October 3, 1788.

198 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

in the terrestrial globe. At night Mr. Herschel, by the
King's command, came to exhibit to His Majesty and
the Royal Family the new comet lately discovered by
his sister, Miss Hersijhel ; and while I was playing at
piquet with Mrs. Schwellenberg, the Princess Augusta
came into the room, and asked her if she chose to go
into the garden and look at it. She declined the oflFer,
••and the Princess then made it to me. I was glad to
accept it for all sorts of reasons. We found him at
his telescope. The comet was very small, and had
nothing grand or striking in its appearance ; but it is
the first lady's comet, and I was very desirous to see
it. Mr. Herschel then shewed me some of his new
discovered universes, with all the good humour with
which he would have taken the same trouble for a
brother or a sister astronomer ; there is no possibility
of admiring his genius more than his gentleness."

Of these four paragraphs the first and the last show
undisguised, genuine admiration of this hero of the
stars by a heroine of the pen, "for all sorts of reasons."^
It was the queen of literature crowning the king and
high priest of the stars with the laurel wreath of
a world's homage. Perhaps it was more than this,
different though the ages of the king and queen were.
But the second of the four paragraphs is of a different
nature. It hints at dangers and difficulties, which do
not square with Caroline Herschel's Memoirs. They
may be explained by Miss Burney's knowledge of the

* Miss Burney tells the story of love's progress in her novel of Evelina,
written some time before : '* How rapid was then my Evelina's progress
through those regions of fancy and passion, whither her new guide
conducted her ! She saw Lord Orville at a ball — and he was t?ie most
ammbl of men! She met him again at another — and he had every
virtue vmder Jiewoen ! " {Evelina, ii. 149).

"AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN" 199

talk and whispers among the King's equerries at
Windsor Castle. That a man should be "wretched"
and " in danger of ruin," who had established himself
at Bath and was making a large income there/ points
to something more serious than she could realise or
wished to repeat. Probably the equerries knew about
it, and, without revealing secrets, gave her an indis-
tinct idea that something was or had been seriously
wrong.

At the very end of 1786, Miss Bumey is still in
raptures : " This morning my dear father carried me
to Dr. Herschel. That great and very extraordinary
man received us almost with open arms. He is very
fond of my father, who is one of the council of the
Royal Society this year, as well as himself." The
fondness and the friendship must have been common-
place, when, twelve years later. Dr. Bumey did not
know that Dr. Herschel had been married for ten
years, and was the father of a son six years of age.
But the young lady's admiration knows no abatement.
Nine months after, it rises to, "Dr. Herschel is a
delightful man ; so unassuming with his great know-
ledge, so willing to dispense it to the ignorant, and
so cheerful and easy in his general manners that, were
he no genius, it would be impossible not to remark
him as a pleasing and sensible maa" Miss Bumey's
picture is not over-coloured, according to the evidence
of other eye-witnesses. She was then thirty-four years
of age, and seven years after married a French emi-
grant, without fortune and without prospects. En-
thusiasm such as she showed for William Herschel,

"^ Memoirs J p. 321, "Was called from his lucrative employment at
Bath."

200 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

and pardonably showed, may have been akin to a
warmer feeling; but his marriage for money, partly
at least, somewhat cooled her raptures, or her hopes.

Dr. Burney has also presented the world with word-
pictures of himself and Herschel, which are full of
life and amusement. Ab time went on, he was fired
with the ambition of distinguishing himself in poetry
as well as music. He believed he had wing-power
suflScient to soar to heights of poetry as high as
Newton or Herschel reached in prose. He proposed
in fact to write a Newtoniad and a Herscheliad for
the enlightenment of future ages. He made no secret
of his purpose; his daughters encouraged him to
undertake the work; Herschel was consulted, was
flattered, was persuaded or cajoled. The King, the
Queen, the Princesses heard of the great work; the
Court, of course, whatever some people of sense may
have thought or said, echoed the wishes and praises
of their superiors, and the poet proceeded, amidst
applause, to complete his Poetical History of Astro-
nomy. It was the age of didactic poems. Darwin's
Botanic Garden had been a success, and parts of it
were so written that they deserved and won the
applause of intelligent readers. Probably Dr. Burney
imagined that astronomy, which was then filling the
world with wonder, was an equally good field for
a great poem. He certainly believed that it was a
book he was competent to write: but, while he was
convinced of his ability to ascend to the heights of
Parnassus, he had doubts of his knowledge of the
science. To solve these doubts an interview with
Herschel was necessary. The story then proceeds,
September 28, 1798.

DR. BURNERS VISIT AND POEM 201

"I drove through Slough in order to ask at Dr.
Herschel's door when my visit would be least incon-
venient to him — that night or next morning. The
good soul was at dinner, but came to the door himself
to press me to alight immediately, and partake of his
family repast: and this he did so heartily that I
could not resist. ... I expected (not knowing that
Herschel was married) only to have found Miss Her-
schel; but there was a very old lady, the mother, I
believe, of Mra Herschel, who was at the head of the
table herself, and a Scots lady (a Miss Wilson, daughter
of Dr. Wilson of Glasgow, an eminent astronomer).
Miss Herschel, and a little boy. They rejoiced at the
accident, which had brought me there, and hoped I
would send my carriage away and take a bed with
them.

" We soon grew acquainted — I mean the ladies and
I — and before dinner was over we seemed old friends
just met after a long absence. Mra Herschel is
sensible, good-humoured, unpretending, and well-bred ;
Miss Herschel all shjmess and virgin modesty; the
Scots lady sensible and harmless; and the little boy
entertaining, promising, and comical. Herschel, you
know, and everybody knows, is one of the most
pleasing and well-bred natural characters of the pre-
sent age, as well as the greatest astronomer."

"The shyness and virgin modesty" of little Miss
Herschel, at the youthful age of forty-eight, are over-
done in this word-picture by Dr. Bumey. Could we
have got her views of their visitor's flattery and
folly, they would perhaps have been an amusing
addition to the fund of drollery and acidity, with
which her recollections are pleasantly flavoured. And

202 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

they would have been to the point. When Dr. Bumey
made Herschel aware of his purpose in calling, the
latter insisted on the trunk being unpacked, the
poem produced, and the reading finished then and
there. What the poet knew would be the work of
a week or a month, if the book had been finished,
the astronomer hoped to get out of the road as
speedily as he would an ordinary observation on a
starry night. He found himself buttonholed to in-
stalments that spread over many months, and seem
to have grown very captivating, though he must have
soon seen that, if his was the sword of fame, Bumey
considered his tongue as the more important trumpet,
that would blow that fame abroad to all time. But
the situation was full of surprises. "He made a
discovery to me," Dr. Burney goes on to say, " which
had I known it sooner, would have overset me, and
prevented my reading any part of my work. He
said that he had almost always had an aversion to
poetry, which he regarded as the arrangement of
fine words, without any useful meaning or adher-
ence to truth ; but that when truth and science were
united to these fine words, he liked poetry very
well." This is rather an odd confession to come
from a man whose sister tells us, " He composed glees,
catches, etc., for such voices as he could secure, as it
was not easy to find a singer to take the place of
Miss Linley."^ However, Dr. Bumey managed to
persuade him that in his didactic poem fine words
were united to science and truth. The astronomer
called on the poet in town, lived in his house, and

^ Was the song referred to on p. 321 of the Manoirs, " In thee I bear
so dear a part," his own? It "was going to be published by desire."

THE HERSCHELIAD 203

gave audience to his verses : " Herschel was so humble
as to confess that I knew more of the history of
astronomy than he did, and had surprised him with
the mass of information I had got together. . . . He
thanked me for the entertainment and instruction
I had given him. 'Can anything be grander?' and
all this before he knows a word of what I have
said of himself — all his discoveries, as you may
remember, being kept back for the twelfth and last
book."

After an interval of seven months and more, a long
story follows of Herschel's patience and good humour
under repeated doses of poetry, conceit, and undue
self-importance from Dr. Burney. The latter's letter
to his daughter, then Madame D'Arblay, is dated,
"Slough, Monday morningy July 22, 1799, in bed
at Dr. Herschel's, half -past five, where I can neither
sleep nor lie idle," and runs thus: "I believe I told
you on Friday that I was going to finish the perusal
of my astronomical verses to the great astronomer
on Saturday." Burney had already read to him the
Newtoniad, and other pieces. He was now come to
the Herscheliad, about twenty years too soon, for
the astronomer had not reached the height of his
fame in 1799. "After tea Herschel proposed that
we two should retire into a quiet room in order to
resume the perusal of my work, in which no progress
has been made since last December. The evening was
finished very cheerfully ; and we went to our bowers
not much out of humour with each other or the
world." Much more follows, revealing the self-com-
placency and conceit of the man, along with the
modesty and retiring nature of Herschel. There were

204 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

only two men on the terrace or in the Castle concert-
room that evening, the King and Dr. Bumey; and
the important subject talked of was Dr. Bumey's
poem.

Herschers friendship with Dr. Wilson,^ the Pro-
fessor of Astronomy in Glasgow University, was
probably the reason of repeated visits paid by him
to Scotland. Of the first of these visits no notice
is taken by his sister, a somewhat singular omission.
It was paid in the summer of 1792. The second
known visit was made eighteen years after, is briefly
referred to by his sister, and is confounded by his
biographers with that of 1792. It took place in 1810.
A third visit, obscurely hinted at by his sister, took
place the following year. In a paper read to the
Royal Society in 1812, he mentions an observation
of the comet of 1811 made by him at Glasgow, and
records another which he made at Alnwick on his
way south, some weeks later. That Glasgow may
have been to Herschel a place of summer pilgrimage
more frequently than on these three visits seems not
improbable. His friendship with the Wilsons and
their famihes, like that with Dr. Watson, was close and
long continued, the friendship of worthy men, holding
each other in the highest esteem. As he visited Dr.
Watson at Bath and Dawlish, so he appears to have
visited the Wilsons at Glasgow. At any rate we
know that he " was generally from home " in summer.

When Herschel was in Scotland in the summer
of 1792, he was accompanied by a Russian friend.
General Komarzewsky. So intimate were the two

^ Alexander Wilson was Professor of Astronomy from 1760 to 1784 ;
his son Patrick from 1784 to 1799.

FREEDOM OF GLASGOW 205

that the General " used to say to Herschel, Why does
not he (meaning Bang George ill.) make you Duke
of Slough ? " Probably his sister thought the same,
but the pardonable flattery created a bond between
them, which she does not seem ever to have forgotten.
On reaching Glasgow, Herschel found a pleasant
surprise awaiting him and his friend, as new as it
was unexpected. Both of them were to be honoured
with the freedom of the city. Glasgow was then a
town, where salmon-fishers dried their nets on that
busy centre of trade, the Broomielaw, and was
inhabited by not more than a tenth of its present
population ; but its magistrates were far-seeing men,
who crowned theii* city with honour when they
formally entered on their Burgess Boll the name of
William Herschel. Their Council Records contain
the following:!—

'' Glasgow, 19^^ Juw 1792.

"The said day Dr. William Herschel, Astronomer,
and General Homarseuski are unanimously admitted
honorary Burgesses and Guild Brethren of this City."

An Edinburgh newspaper ^ recorded the homage
thus paid to science by the merchant city of the
west, but the Edinburgh Town Council, neither then
nor subsequently, followed the example so honourably
set by Glasgow.

^ I am indebted for this extract to the kindness of Sir James
Marwick, the Town Clerk of Glasgow.

There appears to be some doubt about the spelling of the Bussian
name in the Council Record.

' Edinburgh Ooura/ntf June 28, 1792.

206 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

Another visit paid by Herschel was to Paris at
the commencement of the shortlived peace of Amiens
in 1801. From the brief notes preserved in his sister's
Memoirs it appears that, on July 13, "my brother,
Mrs. H., my nephew John, and Miss Baldwin left
Slough to go to Paris." The next entry is, " Aug. 25th.
— All returned with my nephew dangerously ill.
Going daily for some hours to work at the Observa-
tory, and to receive visitors and letters, had not
hastened my recovery, for it required no less than
seven months before I could be without the attend-
ance of Dr. Pope." During these weeks of holiday
in France, Herschel had opportunities of renewing
or strengthening the friendly feelings with which the
astronomers of that country, during an age of great
hostility between the two nations, regarded the
labours of their English brethren. They had shown
their esteem for him in particular by choosing him
as a member of the Institute, one of the highest
honours that could be bestowed on a man of science.
But his visit waa made more remarkable by an
interview with Napoleon Buonaparte, who was then
First Consul, and afterwards Emperor. Twelve years
later he gave an account of it to Thomas Campbell,
the poet, who met him at Brighton, and thus records
the story : ^ —

" I was anxious to get from him as many particulars
as I could about his interview with Buonaparte.
The latter, it was reported, had astonished him by his
astronomical knowledge.

" * No,* he said ; * the First Consul did surprise me by
his quickness and versatility on all subjects; but in

^ Beattie's Life o/Camjfbell, ii. 234, 235, 239.

INTERVIEW WITH NAPOLEON 207

science he seemed to know little more than any well-
educated gentleman, and of astronomy much less
for instance than our own King. His general air/
he said, * was something like affecting to know more
than he did know/ He was high and tried to be
great with Herschel, I suppose, without success ; and
'I remarked/ said the astronomer, 'his hypocrisy in
concluding the conversation on astronomy by observing
how all these glorious views gave proofs of an
Almighty Wisdom/ I asked him if he thought the
system of Laplace to be quite certain, with regard
to the total security of the planetary system from
the effects of gravitation losing its present balance?
He said. No ; he thought by no means that the universe
was secured from the chance of sudden losses of
parts/'

It is unfortunate that no other record exists of the
estimate formed of Napoleon by Herschel. Campbell
may have imported into the astronomer's words turns
of thought which he never meant to convey, and a
man is sometimes more free of speech in conversa-
tion than he would be in print. An interviewer, as
modem journalism has proved, may, even without
knowing it, give an unhappy twist to a man's words
and thoughts. Assuming, however, that the poet's
report is strictly correct, and remembering that the
great bitterness of Herschel's life sprang from a
French victory, unforgettable by him or his relations,
his words must be received with a discount unavoid-
able in the circumstances. Both poet and astronomer
show their feelings, perhaps, by the use of the long
obsolete title "First Consul" instead of the better
known ^* Emperor," and it ought never to have been

2o8 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

said that Napoleon, a trained and experienced officer
of artillery, a member of the mathematical section
of the Institute of France, and the founder of the
Egyptian Institute, knew little more of science than
any well-educated gentleman. To compare his know-
ledge of astronomy with that of George III. is unfair.
If Herschel meant nothing more than what the King
learned from him and Mainburg and Bevis during
half a century, of the ways and methods of observing,
it may be perfectly true, and yet may have been
such as Napoleon, with his natural quickness and
his knowledge of mathematics, could have picked
up in an hour or two. But a comparison of the
two men — one doing little more than signing his
name, the other leading mighty armies, fighting
terrible battles, and ruling almost a whole continent
— seems exceedingly absurd, from an intellectual point
of view. Nor should it be forgotten that Napoleon,
by taking the learned men of France to Egjrpt with
him, entertaining them at his table on shipboard,
and protecting them in their researches, laid the
foundation of a new science, which has fiUed man-
kind with wonder — the languages and records of
the ancient worlds of Egypt and Assyria. To say
that he affected to know more than he did know
was, if true, a justifiable pretence in a man ruling
over many nations, and absorbed in multitudinous
details. But to charge him with hypocrisy for
expressing his views on Almighty Wisdom is not
creditable to either poet or astronomer. If Herschel
conversed with him by means of an interpreter, the
latter may have done, and possibly would do, injustice
to the Emperor, perht^ps to the astronomer also. But

CAMPBELL'S VISIT TO HERSCHEL 209

it is not likely that Napoleon, who wrote to Laplace
about his great works, and was on intimate terms with
the greatest minds of France, would descend to parade
knowledge he did not possess, or indulge in a hypocrisy
that was altogether out of place. Even his biographer
writes, "The impression left upon Campbell's mind
by this conversation appears to have been a little
too strong."

Far more pleasant is the view given by Campbell of
the astronomer himself. "I spent all Sunday with
him and his family," he says. " His simplicity, his
kindness, his anecdotes, his readiness to explain — and
make perfectly perspicuous too — his own sublime con-
ceptions of the universe are indescribably charming.
He is seventy-six, but fresh and stout ; and there
he sat, nearest the door, at his friend's house, alter-
nately smiling at a joke, or contentedly sitting
without share or notice in the conversation. Any
train of conversation he follows implicitly ; anything
you ask he labours with a sort of boyish earnestness
to explain — a great, simple, good old man." The
impression made on Campbell's mind is summed up
in these words : " I really and unfeignedly felt as
if I had been conversing with a supernatural intelli-
gence. . . . After leaving Herschel I felt elevated and
overcome; and have in writing to you made only
this memorandum of some of the most interesting
moments of my life."

A German writer, who paid a visit to Herschel at
Slough a few years afterwards, has left an equally
pleasant picture of the astronomer-sage.

"While we were standing by this machine (the
great telescope), which we more admired than com-

14

2IO HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

prehended, its master appeared, a cheerful old man,
aged eighty-one. How unassumingly did he make
his communications ! How lightly did he ascend the
steps to the gallery! With what calm pleasure did
he seem to enjoy the success of his efforts in life ! All
accounts from his native country appeared to please
him, although the German language had become
somewhat less familiar to his ear. After a short
conversation, we took our leave, charged with friendly
greetings to all beyond the sea, who might still remem-
ber him.

" Herschel is unmarried, but his sister Caroline resides
with him, not only as a superintendent of his house-
hold, and support of his old age, but also as a partaker
of his studies. She has been his constant assistant
in his labours, and has made some discoveries herself,
among which were five comets in the years 1786,
1791, a dissertation on which she laid before the
Royal Society. Both of them enjoy the love and
esteem of all that approach them.

"Herschel's earthly labour is now, I presume, at
an end, and the time cannot be far distant when we
shall be able to say of him,

'Candidus consuetum miratur limen Olympi,
Sub pedibusque, — ^nubes et sidera videt:'"

In terms of his appointment as King's Astronomer,
Herschel was bound to receive visitors sent from
Windsor Castle, and to explain to them his instruments,
as well as to act the part of showman of the heavens.
Probably this dangling at the heels of titled nothings
brought him money from the sale of telescopes, but it
was a tax on his time and strength, which his sister

VISITORS AT SLOUGH 211

saw and dreaded from the first. "I know how
wretched and feverish one feels after two or three
nights' waking," Caroline writes of her own all-night
vigils. With a woman's quickness for those she loves,
she sometimes managed to shield her brother, wearied,
like her, with an all-night sitting, from these thought-
less callers. " In my way into the garden," she writes,
as far back as 1797, "I was met and detained by
Lord S. and another gentleman, who came to see my
brother and his telescopes. By way of preventing too
long an interruption, I told the gentlemen that I had
just found a comet, and wanted to settle its place. I
pointed it out to them, and after having seen it they
took their leave." But she could not always thus act
the part of guardian angel. On October 4, 1806,
" two parties from the Castle came to see the comet,"
observed two days before, "and during the whole
month my brother had not an evening to himself. . . .
It has ever been my opinion that on the 14th of
October his nerves received a shock of which he
never got the better afterwards ; for on that day (in
particular) he had hardly dismissed his troop of men,"
assisting him in the laborious work of polishing the
40-f eet mirror, " when visitors assembled, and from the
time it was dark till past midnight he was on the
grass-plot surrounded by between fifty and sixty
persons, without having had time for putting on
proper clothing, or for the least nourishment passing
his lips. Among the company, I remember, were the
Duke of Sussex, Prince Galitzin, Lord Damley, a
number of officers. Admiral Boston, and some ladies."
The picture is outlined with a clearness nothing but
strong feeling could inspire ; the strain was manifestly

212 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

too great, and it was tearing down his enfeebled frame.
For sixteen years the battle continued ; the phases of
it are recorded by his biographer, and little remains
but to trace in her words, how year after year saw his
strength declining and the flame of life dying out. At
the same time it is diflicult to understand how Herschel
and his wife allowed this process of painful decay to
go forward unchecked. He did not require thus to die
in harness actually by inches. Both of them were
wealthy ; ^ and though he had resigned office, it is not
probable that his pension would have been withdrawn.
But the story of fading strength is told in words that
cannot be explained away.

"When all hopes for the return of vigour and strength
necessary for resuming the unfinished task of polishing
the great mirror was gone, all cheerfulness and spirits
had also forsaken him, and his temper was changed
from the sweetest almost to a pettish one; and for
that reason I was obliged to refrain from troubling
him with any questions, though ever so necessary, for
fear of irritating or fatiguing him." Want of room,
the refusal of funds to meet expenses, the great
telescope "nearly fallen into decay almost in all its
parts," "every nerve of the dear man unstrung by
over-exertion," may well send a thrill of sympathetic
sorrow through every reader of the story. Neither
Brighton nor Bath, nor summer visits to Edinburgh
or Glasgow could restore the lost tone: "A farther
attempt at leaving the work complete became im-
possible." How sorrowful the entries for more than a

^ His personal effects are set down in his will at £6000, and he left
£25,000 more in 3 per cent. Eeduced Annuities to his son, besides
other large legacies.

OVERWORK AND DECAY 213

twelvemonth after ! " My brother not well," " his life
despaired of," " permitted to see him, but only for two
or three minutes " ! And in this time of distress the
worthless Dietrich is causing them no end of trouble
by his conduct. Let it be said on his behalf that his
daughter, Mrs. Knipping, atoned in future years, to
some extent at least, for her father's shortcomings.
She was the faithful and trusted attendant of her
aunt Caroline during the last years of her long life.
As years roll on, the record remains equally mournful :
" His strength is now (1815), and has for the last two
or three years not been equal to the labour required
for polishing 40-feet mirrors"; at a Royal "fete at
Frogmore" (1817) " I was obliged to go home with my
brother," who " found himself too feeble to remain in
company." But feebleness and ill-health gave no
remission from a showman's duty: "The Archduke
Michael of Russia, with a numerous attendance, came
to see Jupiter," etc. (1818). Princesses, archdukes, lords
and ladies came to see many objects in the 10-f t. and other
telescopes (1819), unaware that the sage-astronomer,
whom they were treating as a showman, was hastening
to the grave. His sister " with much concern saw that
he had exerted himself too much above his strength."

" A small slip of yellow paper " traced by a tremu-
lously feeble hand, indicating the appearance of "a
great comet with a long tail," was among the last
communications from Herschel to his sister. She kept
it as a relic of a lamp of life that once burned brightly,
and was then flickering in the socket. For three years
it continued to flicker, till the end came, on August 25,
1822. A noble light of humanity and science then set
for ever on this earthly scen^,

214 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

The writings of Herschel may be said tx> be contained
in that wonderful repository of science and observation.
The Transactions of the Royal Society. He contri-
buted sometimes one, sometimes two or three or four
papers in a year between 1780 and 1818, except in the
years 1813 and 1816. Few scientific writers were so
active with their pen. Everard Home, in a different
sphere of research, surpassed him in the number of his
contributions ; but two thousand quarto passes — to say
nothing of valuable and instructive diJ^ams-filled
with Wonderful discoveries, rare or useful observations,
noble theories, and lofty imaginings formed a life-work
of unusual merit. They were written in a language
that became familiar to him in a foreign country only
after he passed his twentieth year. Titles and text
are not unfrequently somewhat prolix, but what was
a peculiarity of the age cannot be attributed as a fault
to HerscheL His sister, to whom the world is indebted
for the form in which not a few of these papers
appeared, carefully preserved seventy-two of her
brother's in five volumes, which she transferred to
his son's keeping in 1830. Only sixty-nine papers
were laid before the Royal Society and one before the
Royal Astronomical. What the other contents of her
bundle were she has not informed us.

In the writings of Herschel and his sister there is a
singular silence on the affairs of another world than
this material universe, in whose vast surroundings we
spend our brief earthly life. However, it is not an
unbroken silence. His sister repeatedly refers to a
future state, and to a home she longed for, a meeting-
place with those she loved and worked with on earth.
She l^ft England less than two months after her

HERSCHEUS RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS 215

brother William's death, "parted with her little
property," and " thought at that time she should not
live a twelvemontL" She lived for twenty-six years
after, "alone" and disappointed. During that long
period she gave expression to hopes which may be
justly regarded as echoes of sentiments expressed by
her brother. Unquestionably her mind was a mirror
that truly reflected hia It is evident also from his
conversation with Thomas Campbell that he enter-
tained a horror of hypocrisy, which may have imposed
silence on him when he would otherwise have spoken
out. Once, in a philosophical paper, he did speak out
on a future state of rewards and punishmenta Had
the matter not lain very near his heart, he would
scarcely have written as he did. The subject of the
paper was the Constitution of the Sun. Referring
to the views of certain writers on the place of punish-
ment for the wicked, he says—

" The sun, viewed in this light, appears to be nothing
else than a very eminent, large, and lucid planet,
evidently the first, or in strictness of speaking, the
only primary one of our system ; all others being truly
secondary to it. Its similarity to the other globes of
the solar system with regard to its solidity, its
atmosphere, and its diversified surface; the rotation
upon its axis, and the fall of heavy bodies, leads us on
to suppose that it is most probably inhabited, like
the rest of the planets, by beings whose organs are
adapted to the peculiar circumstances of that vast
globe.

" Whatever fanciful poets might say, in making the
sun the abode of blessed spirits, or angry moralists
devise, in pointing it out as a fit place for the punish-

2i6 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

ment of the wicked, it does not appear that they had
any other foundation for their assertions than mere
opinion and vague surmise; but now I think my-
self authorized, upon astronomical principles, to
propose the sun as an inhabitable world, and am
persuaded that the foregoing observations, with the
conclusions I have drawn from them, are fully
sufficient to answer every objection that may be
made against it."

A man who filled the world with his renown as
Herschel did, and who charmed all who happened to
meet him as we know he charmed Miss Bumey,
Thomas Campbell, and Niemeyer, could not have been
expected to leave this life without worthy commemora-
tion from a poet's pen. Dr. Bumey's Herscheliad
was never published; Campbell preserved silence
except in poetic prose, written while the astronomer
was still living ; and no one seems to have addressed
himself to what was almost a duty of the age, except a
writer, who hailed from Teversal Rectory, and was
unable to force Uranus with its proper quantity into a
line of poetry.^

" Herschel, alas, great astronomic sage,
Has sunk in death, yet full of honoured age,
Through widest space the heavenly orbs he viewed.
The comet's track, and stars unnumbered shewed ;
Ouranus first he saw, with all its train,
And fires volcanic found in Luna's plain."

The Herscheliad could scarcely have contained poorer
or more unworthy lines.

Far more worthy of record is the eulogium passed
by Arago : " We may confidently assert, relative to the

^ OemtUmaWs Magazine, vol. zcii. (1822).

ARAGO'S EULOGIUM 217

little house and garden of Slough, that it is the spot of
all the world where the greatest number of discoveries
have been made. The name of that village will never
perish: science will transmit it religiously to our
latest posterity."

CHAPTER XII

DOUBLE STARS AND NEBULA

With the intuition of genius, Herschel, at an early
period in his career, leaped to the conclusion that, as
a planet revolves round the sun, so, in the regions of
space, stars may revolve round stars, or sun round sun.
It was a magnificent idea, apparently beyond proof,
and would be reckoned among the useless things of
science. " We have already shown," he wrote in 1803,
"the possibility that two stars, whatever be their
relative magnitudes, may revolve, either in circles or
ellipses, round their common centre of gravity; and
that, among the multitude of the stars of the heavens,
there should be many sufficiently near each other to
occasion this mutual revolution, must also appear
highly probable." A sun of enormous size and bright-
ness revolving round another sun as big or as bright,
but it may be of a different colour, might be and really
was regarded as the dream of a poet, imagining things
that mathematics, with inexorable logic, gave no coun-
tenance to. But imagination sometimes realises truth
long before the facts of science make it known. It
was so here. " I shall therefore now proceed to give an
account of a series of observations on double stars, com-
prehending a period of about twenty-five years, which,
if I am not mistaken, will go to prove that many of

218

DOUBLE STARS 219

them are not merely double in appearance, but must be
allowed to be real binary combinations of two stars, inti-
mately held together by the bond of mutual attraction."

Herschel's first catalogue of double stars was pre-
sented to the Royal Society in a memoir of fifty pages
on January 10, 1782. It was a work of enormous
labour to be undertaken and carried out by a hard-
working musician during the nights, that followed
days of absorbing business. Of the number 269, con-
tained in this catalogue, 227 had not been noted by any
astronomer before him. It was not only a new field
of research he may be considered to have opened up.
He had also two distinct ends in view, which may be
said to have been equally novel. One of them was,
by means of these double or triple systems, to discover
the distances of the stars from our sun, and the other
to ascertain whether " small stars revolved round large
ones." He failed in the former, he was successful in
the latter. The arithmetic of the one was too hard for
him; the poetry of the other was reduced to the
commonplace of fact, after a waiting period of twenty-
five years.

Everyone knows that if a tree and a house be
in the same line of sight from a distant spectator,
the eye of the spectator may imagine the tree to
be at the same distance as the house, but cannot
measure the space between them. We cannot see
distance; it is an acquirement gained by experience
from the sense of touch, and gained so insensibly that
we think we see distance in front of us, height or
depth, it may be, while, in fact, we only see length and
breadth. An observer, seeing two stars so close that,
to the naked eye, they seem only one, may consider

220 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

them both at the same distance. A little reflection,
however, soon convinces him that the one star, though
shining at a vast distance from the other, may be so
placed in a line drawn from our eye to the latter as
to be nearly or altogether eclipsed by it. Sometimes
these stars are so close that the two pass for one, till
an improvement in the telescope separates the com-
panions, and shows them to be distinct. . Herschel had
this experience, and one of the most singular instances
of it is not yet thirty years old. The dog-star Sinus
is among the best known stars in our southern skies.
Its brightness is forty- to sixty-fold that of the sun,
its distance is such that a flash of light from it
takes perhaps ten years to reach our eyes, and its
weight exceeds that of two of our suns. This vast and
brilliant sun was found to indulge in vagaries which
were, and some of which still are, the puzzle of
astronomers. They could not see, and therefore did
not know. But although they could not see, they
could imagine what the unseen cause of these vagaries
was : for " the eyes of the mind can supply the want of
the most powerful telescopes, and lead to astronomical
discoveries of the highest importance." ^ Another star
in the neighbourhood of Sirius, the mathematicians
said, is moving round him. They calculated its orbit,
they told observers where to apprehend the disturber,
but in vain. At last the eighteen-inch object-glass,
made for the Chicago Observatory in the United States,
was turned on Sirius by way of trial. Great was the
surprise of the manufacturers when they saw that the
mighty sun had a fainter but a very bulky companion
in his company, and was seen in the direction pre-

^ Arago, Biographies, etc., p. 224.

ORBITS OF DOUBLE STARS 221

dieted by mathematicians. It is twice as heavy as our
sun, but does not give a fiftieth part of the light.
Stars then may be double, or treble, or even quadruple
by nature, or by the accident of position.

Comparing his own observations and such others as
he could procure, Herschel calculated that the one star
moved round the other, or that both moved round their
common centre of gravity in the following double
stars : —

Castor in about 342 years 2 months.
7 Leonis in about 1200 years,
c Bootis in not less than 1681 years,
d Serpentis in about 375 years.
y Virginis in about 708 years. ^

Another double star that he carefully examined was
Zeta Herculis. It presented him with a sight " which
is new in astronomy ; it is, the occultation of one star
by another." For twenty-one years he continued to
keep a watch on the star. After twenty years had
passed he could no longer perceive the smaller of the
two companions. The following year he found "the
apparent disk a little distorted; but there could not
be more than about f of the apparent diameter of
the small star wanting to a complete occultation."
But the observations made were not sufficient to
determine the nature of the motion that produced
these effects. The long period of 1681 years set down
against e Bootis, Herschel himself points out as subject
to uncertainties, which it will take long to clear up.

* "One thing very remarkable I must tell you, 7 Virginis is now a
siiigU star in both the twenty-foot, and the seven-foot equatorial ! ! ! "
(Sir John Herschel, March 8, 1836). He means that one of the two
suns had eclipsed the other.

2 22 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

A slight mistake in exceedingly small measurements
may cause serious errors in the calculated times of
revolution.

It should not be forgotten that the King's equerry
whom Miss Bumey, in her gossip from Windsor Castle,
calls Colonel Welbred, foretold that time would do
justice to Herschel, and turn the laugh at him against
the laughers. And time has done him justice with a
most ungrudging hand. Eight years after his death,
it was aaked by a leader of modem enUghtenment.
''What length of time must the cosmologist suppose
necessary to reduce a gaseous nebula into a permanent
planetary system ? Experience shows pretty clearly
the inutility of such speculations." ... Of the moon's
" origin and internal structure we neither know, nor
ever can know, anything whatever. And if such is
the result of our researches respecting a body placed
almost in our immediate vicinity, there is little reason
to hope that we shall be more successful with regard
to those whose distances are so great that the most
powerful telescopes are required to render them even
visible." ^ This was written in 1830 ; it was ill-natured
disparagement of a noble attempt to solve the mysteries
of the universe, and to give practical proof of man's
kinship with God; it was wholly unscientific. In
1842 another greatly-extolled writer declared that in
that region of inquiry there did not exist any dis-
covered, or even, without doubt discoverable phe-
nomenon.2 The equerries of Windsor might be laughed
at and forgiven; the scepticism that prompted men of
science to bid their brethren fold their hands and do
nothing, was an unpardonable sin against truth. It

^ Edin. Rev. li. 101. * Comte, NineteeiUh CetUwry (1897), 908.

HERSCHEL'S CLAIMS 223

was of the same nature as the scientific proof that
steamboats could not cross the Atlantic, and was
belied, as the other was, by facts.

To Herschel then belongs the credit not merely of
having suspected the revolution of sun round sun in
the far distant realms of space, but also of actually
detecting the fact that this was going on among the
stars. He has the credit also of having, with im-
perfect appliances, measured the angles which enabled
him to calculate the times of revolution of these
systems of suns. It was a beginning, a wonderful
beginning of a new departure in man's warfare with
ignorance, and with the bonds that tie him down to
the earth. He did not know, probably he was so
wrapt up in his own conceptions of the usefulness of
the telescope, that he could not imagine a more potent
revealer of the secrets of the universe than a gigantic
mirror at the bottom of a gigantic tube, or an immense
eye at the object end of a telescope. A glass prism
has done what the telescope could not do, revealed
double stars where they were not known to exist,
shown their rates of motion to or from us, and where
an unseen ball is a companion to a living and a lighted
sun, told us what they are made of, and enabled us
to weigh them as if they were in the scales of a
balance. To be able to do this, or apprehend the way
it has been done, or even to know the fact, lifts human
nature to a loftier height than it ever attained in the
past, and the pioneer in this elevation of mankind was
originally a bandsman in the Hanoverian Guards, a
musician of Bath. Nor should it be forgotten that
the improvement of the telescope, with which these
revelations of the secret things of the starry heavens

224 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

are closely connected, was largely his work. He
laboured indefatigably himself; he invited, he also
aroused into honourable emulation, the rivalry of
others to equal or surpass his achievements.

What Herschel could only suspect or assert, the
glass prism has proved. These mighty suns, "in
number numberless," are made of the same materials
as our earth and our sun — iron, magnesium, hydrogen,
sodium, etc. The vast universe is governed by the
same laws, and made of the same matter. It is, so
to speak, the work of one and the same building
hand. To have risen to this simple truth by explor-
ing the suns and systems of the universe is a reward
worth all the time and trouble spent in working it
out. Mankind, in this respect alone, stands on a
loftier platform now than half a century ago. One-
ness of plan, manifested in this widespread oneness
of working, implies oneness of the worker. A lofty
moral truth has resulted from the labours and specula-
tions of which leaders of scientific truth in Europe
formerly saw only the inutility. The Maker, Governor,
and Upholder of all these worlds and universes is one
and the same. Who He is, what is His central seat
of power no telescope, no glass prism can reveaL
Amid the wonders of infinite space and time, our
standards of measurement and knowledge may be
said to be our five senses, and if one of these, sight,
were taken from us, our sphere of knowledge would
be immeasurably reduced in extent. On the other
hand, an addition to the senses we have, a quickening
of the inner light, might reveal this Builder of worlds.
His palace. His living armies, with a distinctness, a
fulness hitherto unknown. Herschel evidently thought

GAMMA VIRGINIS 225

this when he stood in wondering awe before the hole
in the heavens.

That Herschel fell into mistakes regarding double
stars cannot and need not be denied. It was unavoid-
able that the first traveller in an unexplored region,
billions of miles distant from our earth, should err in
tracing paths, measuring time, and estimating dis-
tances. He failed in his calculations with y Virginis,
which he represented as two companions that revolved
round a common centre in 708 years. His son by a
careful discussion of the observations made since 1718
showed that the time of revolution was not 708 years
but 513. It was also predicted that the smaller of the
two companions would reach the point where it is
nearest the larger in the beginning of 1834. Even
these revised calculations proved to be incorrect, for
it did not reach that point till two years later.
Observations of the star were then renewed for
several years; new calculations were made, and the
time of revolution of the lesser companion round the
greater was found to be 182 years. But it came out
that the orbit of 1834, with the time 513 years, was
nearly the same, in part of its course, as the true orbit,
and was " a curious example, and by no means the first
in the history of the progress of discovery, where of
two possible courses, each at the moment equally
plausible, the wrong has been chosen."^

But Herschel's study of the fixed stars and of the
unity of plan in nature went farther than we have
yet traced. A paper read by him in 1814 contains
the following facts, that might almost have been pro-
phecies of wonders in store for men — " Stars although

^ Min. iZev., 1848, 132-83.
IS

226 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

surrounded by a luminous atmosphere, may be looked
upon as so many opaque, habitable, planetary globes ;
differing, from what we know of our own planets,
only in their size, and by their intrinsically luminous
appearance. They also, like the planets, shine with
differently coloured light. That of Arcturus and
Aldebaran, for instance, is as different from the light
of Sirius and Capella, as that of Mars and Saturn is
from the light of Venus and Jupiter. A still greater
variety of coloured star-light has already been she¥m
to exist in many double stars, such as 7 Andromedse,
jS Cygni, and many more. In my sweeps are also
recorded the places of 9 deep garnet, 5 bright garnet,
and 10 red coloured stars, of Various small magnitudes
from the 7 th to the 12th.

" By some experiments on the light of a few of the
stars of the 1st magnitude, made in 1798, by a prism
applied to the eye-glasses of my reflectors, adjustable
to any angle, and to any direction, I had the following
analyses :

" The light of Sirius consists of red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, purple, and violet.

" a Ononis contains the same colours, but the red is
more intense, and the orange and yellow are less
copious in proportion than they are in Sirius.

" Procyon contains all the colours, but proportionally
more blue and purple than Siriua

''Arcturus contains more red and orange and less
yellow in proportion than Sirius.

"Aldebaran contains much orange, and very little
yellow.

" a Lyrae contains much yellow, green, blue, and
purple."

SPECTRA AND GROWTH OF STARS 227

The foundation of what may be called a new science
was thus laid by Herschel more than half a century
before anything was built on it.

In that paper also he embodied curious speculations
on the growth of stars : " If the nebulosity should sub-
side into the star, as seems to be indicated by the
assumed form of the fan-shaped nebulas, the star
would receive an increase of matter proportional to
the magnitude and density of the nebulosity in contact

with it/:

Another of the subjects specially studied by Herschel
from an early period in his career was the white clouds
or nebulae seen, even with the naked eye, in various
places among the stars. The telescopes of astronomers
had not done much to add to their number or reveal
their peculiar forms till he took the matter in hand.
In 1786 he laid before the Royal Society a " catalogue
of a thousand nebulae and clusters of stars." Three
years after, he presented the Society with a " catalogue
of a second thousand new nebulae and clusters of stars";
and in 1802 he added "a catalogue of 500 new
nebulae and clusters of stars." A field of discovery so
rich he had been left to reap alone, except in the assist-
ance, the invaluable assistance, which he received from
his devoted sister Caroline. He looked upon star-
clusters and nebulae as building stones used by the
Creator in constructing the universe; to catalogue,
to watch, and to measure these building stones was a
long step taken in ascertaining the plan on which the
Almighty Architect proceeded. Herschel was laughed
at, most unfairly laughed at, as a " lively and amusing "
dreamer ; science has proved that he was a noble pioneer
of modem discoveries, which inspire mankind with awe.

228 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

The work of observing, meajsuring, and recording these
worlds of wonder, and sometimes of surpassing beauty-
even when seen in the magic mirror of a reflector, was
enormous : but this indefatigable worker, with his like-
minded sister-helper, seemed never to weary in his
marvellous efforts to lift the curtain that hid Creation's
glories from man. What these glories seemed (to him)
to mean was unfolded in 1811 in a memoir, which
anticipated by many years the doctrine of evolution
taught by Darwin, and which showed the progress,
slow it might be, " for, in this case, millions of years
are perhaps but moments," but sure, of a vast body
of gas condensing into a sun or suns with a train of
planets around.^

When Herschel entered upon this inquiry he believed
that these nebulae, or whitish clouds or milky ways are
clusters of stars, too far off to be resolved into separate
points of light, but blended so together as to assume
the appearance of a little cloud in the depths of space.
" Longer experience and a better acquaintance " with
them induced him to change his mind. Vast masses
of gas, in which a few stars were sometimes seen, or
through which they shone from a greater distance,
were believed by him to exist in space, besides those
which an increase of telescopic power could resolve,
as the phrase was, into stars.* It was the idea of a
far-seeing mind, feeling its way to truth, and, in our

^ " The reason for not having a more circumstantial account of such
a number of objects, is that they crowded upon me at the time of
sweeping in such quick succession that of sixty-one I could but just
secure the place in the heavens, and of the remaining three hundred
and sixty -three, I had only time to add the relative size" {Phil,
Trans, for 1811, p. 290).

•» PUL Trans, for 1811, p. 270.

GASEOUS NATURE OF NEBULAE 229

own day, it has been proved true. The prism has
shown that these inconceivably vast masses of gas
exist. Justice to Herschel requires that his rights
to the first announcement of this new and startling
view of the gradual formation of worlds should not be
overlooked, as is sometimes done.^ "The profound
awe," says the discoverer of the gaseous nature of some
nebulsB, " which I felt on looking for the first time at
that which no eye of man had seen, and which even
the scientific imagination could not foreshow," is the
well expressed wonder of true science, when it pene-
trates into the workshops of the Almighty, but Her-
schel's imagination had done more in 1811 than
" foreshow " the discovery made fully by Sir William
Huggins in 1864. The imagination of William Herschel
penetrated into this secret house of wonders, and gave
expression to what was believed to be going on in
eternal ages and through infinite space.

There are two magnificent nebulae to which astro-
nomers have specially turned their telescopes, the one in
Orion and the other in Andromeda. Writing in 1811,
after thirty-seven years' study of these wonderfully
mysterious clouds, Herschel thus speaks of " the great
nebula in the constellation of Orion discovered by
Huyghens. This highly interesting object engaged

^ ''Sir William Herschel supposed that they [nebulae] were all really
star-clusters, but so enormously remote that even the most powerful
telescopes could not render visible the stars composing them"
(Wallace, The Wonderful OerUury^ p. 44). This is a singular statement
to come from the gifted author or co-author of the Darwinian theory.
The reduction of the immensely vast to the comparatively small was
Herschel's view of development or evolution in the realms of space ; the
growth of organic life from the simple cell to the living forms of earth
— the inverse process — is the idea or hypothesis of natural science
to-day. See Phil, Trails,, 1791, pp. 73-83.

2 30 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

my attention already in the beginning of the year
1774, when viewing it with a Newtonian reflector I
made a drawing of it, to which I shall have occasion
hereafter to refer: and having from time to time
reviewed it with my large instruments, it may easily
be supposed that it was the very first object to which,
in February 1787, I directed my 40-feet telescope.
The superior light of this instrument shewed it of such
a magnitude and brilliancy that, judging from these
circumstances, we can hardly have a doubt of its being
the nearest of all the nebuldd in the heavens, and as
such will afford us many valuable informationa I
shall however now only notice that I have placed it in
the present order because it connects in one object the
brightest and faintest of all nebulosities, aiid thereby
enables us to draw several conclusions from its various
appearance."^ By nebulosity or nebulous matter he
meant ''that substance or rather those substances
which give out light, whatsoever may be their nature,
or of whatever different powers they may be pos-
sessed." ^ From a laborious examination of these vast
regions of visible nebulous matter, Herschel found
reason to conclude that the power of gravitation was
condensing the matter towards one or more centres,
which shone with greater brilliance than the rest of
the mass. A motion of rotation round an axis would
also probably result from innumerable particles press-
ing towards a centre, and the matter which did not
condense into a nucleus — perhaps a star or sun —

^PhU. Trans, for 1811, pp. 278, 279, 277, 818. "The nature of
diffused nebulosity is such that we often see it joined to real nebule."
He means apparently gas sometimes very rare joined to matter con-

densed or condensing into stars.

CONSOLIDATION OF NEBULAE 231

would "remain expanded about the nucleus in the
shape of a very extended atmosphere ; or it may be of
an elastic nature, and be kept from uniting with the
nucleus, as their elasticity causes the atmospheres of
the planets to be expanded about them. In this case
we have another property of the nebulous substance to
add to the former qualities of its matter."

No one can read even an outline of these interesting
speculations by an adventurer into the workshops of
creation, without feeling awed by the boldness and
sublimity of his views, as well as desirous of knowing
what else he saw in his magic mirror, or thought he
saw, of the machinery in motion. What he has told
us of a mighty volume of nebulous matter is that " a
nucleus, to which these nebulae seem to approach, is an
indication of consolidation," and that the faintness
of the light in the parts outside the nucleus arises from
" a gradual diminution of the length and density of the
nebulous matter, occasioned by its gravitation towards
the nucleus into which it probably subsides."^ He
believes that "a pretty bright round nebula about a
quarter or one minute in diameter, and looking no
bigger than a pea, may have shrunk into itself till it is
now nineteen hundred times more dense than at first,
— a proportion of density more than double that of
water to air."^ In another case he calculates that
"the condensation may have reduced the nebulous
matter to less than the one hundred and twenty-two
thousandth part of its former bulk." ^ To understand
what these figures mean, suppose a sphere whose
radius is nearly three thousand millions of miles, or as
far as from the sun to our outermost known planet,

1 Pha. Trans., 1811, pp. 308, 310, 311, 315, 316, 318.

232 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

Neptune, to be filled with gas, luminous or not. It
would not occupy more than a fortieth part of the
space in the heavens occupied by the great nebula in
Orion, and it is doubtful if our best telescopes reveal
the whole of that nebula's extent in any direction. It
is within such vast spaces that Herschel imagined this
world-making process to be going on. Man's imagina-
tion quails in his attempt to grasp the space required
for such a workshop, the tools employed, or the time
taken to condense ''nebulous matter" into dazzling
suns or dark companions.

We are so much accustomed to feast our eyes on
drawings of a few magnificent and singularly shaped
nebuldB, that thought is apt to overlook the vast
numbers of them scattered over the heavens in all
stages of size or progress. Herschel did not fall into
this mistake. His object was higher than to satisfy
curiosity or to excite wonder. He had the feeling that
there was a process going on, of which he believed he
could trace not a few of the stages. The smallest and
the least wonderful of the nebulae might thus prove to
be as important in tracing out this progress, as the
most awe-inspiring. Nor did he look upon all of them
as resolvable into stars or masses of shining matter,
more or less rare. He believed that some of them
were not luminous, but dark ; but he made no attempt
to explain, as may be at least attempted to-day, how a
vast mass of invisible gas may become lighted up, and
send its brightness off" on a journey of ten or twenty or
fifty years, to publish to us the changes that, in process
of ages, had taken place in its nature. It was the dis-
covery of world-making he was aiming at in these long
and laborious, but not wearisome researches. Others

STAR-ISLANDS OR WORLD-SYSTEMS 233

have followed in his footsteps with a better equipment
of instruments, if not with a richer endowment of
insight or genius. Others still have looked upon his
lifelong quest as an attempt to reach the foot of the
rainbow ladder, or to master the secret of the philo-
sopher's stone. His papers remain a wonderful monu-
ment of ingenious research and marvellous discovery,
of lofty imaginings and reasoned conclusions.

These nebulae and clusters of stars Herschel called
milky ways, different from the great Milky Way, in
which our solar system is imbedded. He held at first
that they are in no respect connected with our milky
way, but are star-islands or world-systems, perhaps
only in process of formation, at immense distances from
our sun, outlying provinces of creation, as it were, in
the vast ocean of ether, or constructions only begun in
the realms of space. He is supposed to have fallen
from this opinion in his later years, and to have
imagined that all these milky ways and star-clusters
were connected with ours. His latest papers give no
indication of this change of view. He appears indeed
only to have changed his view in so far as to have
regarded our milky way as the greatest of all the
milky ways, visible in our telescopes : but on this point
he was scarcely justified in speaking, as the distance of
the nearest nebula not only was and continues to be
unknown, but the means of determining the distances
of these white clouds have not yet been discovered. It
is thought that the great nebula in Orion, if not the
nearest to us, is among the nearest. Herschel main-
tained this. He had some grounds also for believing
that changes had taken place in the positions of the
nebulous matter during the thirty-seven years he

234 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

had been watching, and still greater changes since
Huyghens, a century and a half earlier, gave a picture
of it in his SysteTna Satumiwm. " The various appear-
ances of this nebula," Herschel writes, " are so instruct-
ive that I shall apply them to the subject of the
partial opacity of the nebulous matter. . . . For when
I formerly saw three fictitious nebulous stars, it will
not be contended that there were three small shining
nebulosities, just in the three lines, in which I saw
them, of which two are now gone, and only one remain-
ing. As well might we ascribe the light surrounding a
star, which is seen through a mist, to a quality of
shining belonging to that particular part of the mist,
which by chance happened to be situated where the
star is seen. If then the former nebulosity of the two
stars which have ceased to be nebulous can only be
ascribed to an effect of the transit or penetration
through nebulous matter which deflected and scattered
it, we have now a direct proof that this matter can
exist in a state of opacity, and may possibly be diffused
in many parts of the heavens without our being able to
perceive it."

It would be unjust to Herschel to pass over the
condemnation of his views, pronounced by Sir David
Brewster in his Life of Sir Isodc Newton, Without
mentioning the name of William Herschel, or of La
Place, who advocated the same views. Sir David writes
as one who felt sure that Newton, for mathematical
reasons alone, would have taken a side against this
Nebular Hypothesis.^ In the last of the famous four
letters written by Sir Isaac to Dr. Bentley, the great
classical scholar and the author of Phalaria, he enters

* Life of Newton, ii. 130.

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS 235

into a mathematical criticism of the opinion of Plato
" that the motion of the planets is such as if they had
all been created by God in some region very remote
from our system, and let fall from thence towards the
sun, their falling motion being turned aside into a
transverse one whenever they arrived at their several
orbits." This, of course, is wholly unlike HerscheFs
theory, or that of Laplace. But of these letters Sir
David says: "In the present day they possess a
peculiar interest. They show that the NebvXar
Hypothesis, the dull and dangerous heresy of the age,
is incompatible with the established laws of the
material universe, and that an omnipotent arm was
required to give the planets their position and
motions in space, and a presiding intelligence to
assign to them the different functions they had to
perform."

These views of Sir David Brewster, eminent man of
science though he was and sincere believer in an
almighty arm ruling all the motions of material bodies,
do not seem justified by facts. Even his great name
is not weighty enough to counterbalance that of
Laplace, when the former aflSrms and the latter denies
that the Nebvla/r Hypothesis " is incompatible with the
established laws of the material universe." Newton's
speculations on Plato's dream of the origin of planets
had nothing to do with the hypothesis in question. It
may be " a dull and dangerous heresy," as Sir David
believed, "but it denies neither an almighty arm nor a
presiding mind." Recent discoveries have given more
probability to the theory — if we are entitled to use that
name : and Herschel's inductions from observed and
classified facts have gone far to prove that Laplace's

236 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

imaginings rest on a more solid foundation than
theories, at their birth, can usually boast of.

In pursuit of his favourite study — the plan of the
Creatoi: in constructing the Temple of the Heavens—
Herschel, with fuller knowledge, and after many years
of labour, departed from Cassini's simple classification
of nebute, and adopted another in closer agreement
with facta It was as follows : —

Class I. Bright nebulae .... 288 in all.

„ II. Faint nebulse .... 909 „ „

„ III. Very faint nebulae . . . 984 „ „

„ IV. Planetary nebulse or stars with
burs, with milky chevelure,
with short rays, remarkable
shapes, etc 79 „ „

„ V. Very large nebulae . . . 52 „ „

„ VI. Very compressed and rich clus-
ters of stars .... 42 „ „

„ VII. Pretty much compressed clusters 67 „ „ ,

„VIII. Coarsely scattered clusters of

stars 88 „ „

As he entered these nebulae on a star map, it was
evident to the eye that the parts of the heavens at a
distance from the Milky Way are most abundant in
white clouds. Of a connection between them and the
Milky Way he does not appear to have been certain.
We must leave it as he left it — in uncertainty and
doubt. Future ages may determine whether the whole
material universe, designed by one mind, governed by
the same laws, built of the same materials, and upheld
for purposes in which the mighty littleness of man
seems to play a not unimportant part, moral as well as
intellectual, has been spread out before our eyes. We
can only look on in wondering adoration at the

ONE PLAN AND ONE MIND 237

glory and vastness of a temple, built by Almighty
Power and Wisdom, the forth-puttings of whose hand
we can see and trace, but whose palace and pre-
sence are hidden in brightness impenetrable to our
sight.

Astronomy has made vast strides in knowledge of
the stars since HerscheFs death. Other magicians,
imbued with his spirit, and wielding a more wonderful
rod of power than his 40-feet reflector, have arisen
to walk in his footsteps, and to tread the paths of
discovery, which more or less dimly he saw and walked
in — double stars; treble systems; eclipses of suns;
youthful stars; dark or dying worlds; star charts;
photographic plates, and vast volumes of gas, lighted
or dark. More even than in his days have the barren
heavens proved to be a land of wonders to curious
man.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SURVIVOR

Of those who helped Herschel onward to fame, all
were dead but his sister Caroline. Dr. Watson, and Sir
Joseph Banks, the King and Herschel himself were
gone. A pleasant and useful fellowship of great minds,
great in respect of rank or great in intellect and heart,
had come to its close. It had lasted for about forty
years, more or less ; and the continuance of it so long
without break or jar reflects the highest credit on all
four. A union of hearts and minds so unusual is
worthy of a passing notice.

Sir William Watson did not belong to the Trium-
virate as it was called, but of him Herschel always
spoke with the deepest respect. Unworthy and un-
scrupulous men, when they think themselves able to
climb without further help, have no repugnance to
kick away the ladder by which they first mounted
into fame. Herschel did not belong to that contemptible
class. His was a noble nature, and as generous as it
was noble. Watson oflcred to assist him with money,
but he preferred to meet the cost of experiment or
manufacture out of his own labours. It was a noble
resolve. But almost from the first he confesses obliga-
tion, and finds a certificate for himself by linking
his name with Watson's. The man with whose fame

288

THE TRIUMVIRATE 239

Europe was ringing, honoured himself by this modesty
of bearing and true manhood. "Grieved to see the
sad change in Sir William's health and spirits,"
Caroline Herschel wrote of their early friend when
she met him and his wife at her brother's house on
May 10, 1817, "I felt my only friend and adviser was
lost to me."

The Triumvirate was composed of the King, Sir
Joseph Banks, and Sir William Herschel.

The King was dead. Whatever may be said or
thought of him in other respects, it should always be
borne in mind that, after the difficulties incident to
Herschel's introduction at Court had been overcome, he
proved himself a munificent patron of science and an
enlightened friend of the great observer. Accustomed
himself to live in the centre of a crowd in his palace,
on the terrace at Windsor, and in his public appear-
ances, it would not occur to him that similar publicity
could be otherwise than agreeable to his astronomer.
When he bargained for Herschers time being devoted,
among other things, to receiving visits from Royal or
titled nonentities, and showing them his instruments,
he did not consider that it was a drain on the astro-
nomer's time and strength, which ought not to have
been asked from him. Caroline Herschel, who saw the
mischief wrought by this waste of energy, the irrita-
tion caused, and the danger run from standing for
hours on wet grass to play the showman to a crowd of
thoughtless nobodies, complains bitterly, and not with-
out reason, of the arrangements thus made. But the
King cannot fairly be held blameworthy. Miss Burney
suffered in nearly the same way. Her attendance on
Queen Charlotte was a burden on body and soul,

240 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

similar to the claims made on Herschel by visitors
from Windsor Castle. Macaulay reprobates, and justly
reprobaties, the thoughtless cruelty, to which it exposed
a woman who could have earned by her pen ten times
the income she received from dancing attendance on a
queen. But the Queen was not altogether in fault
in her case ; nor was the King in Herschel's. It was
Court etiquette, cruel and thoughtless unquestionably ;
— " a slavery of five years, of five years taken from the
best part of her life, and wasted in menial drudgery or
in recreations duller than even menial drudgery, under
galling restraints, and amidst unfriendly or uninterest-
ing companions." ^ It was a huge mistake to cramp
the genius of the novelist or the astronomer by the
formalities and triflings of a Court. It did little or no
harm to the latter; it did irreparable wrong to the
former. People who have lived in a crowd all their
lives, to whom indeed it is the breath of life, cannot
understand that it may be poison to genius.

Sir Joseph Banks also was dead. A year after his
death a German visitor to this country gives a pleasing
picture of an uncommon triumvirate of rank and
science. "In England," he says, "people have long
been accustomed to associate with their recollections of
their late revered Monarch, the names of these two
veterans in science, Herschel and Banks, both not only
of nearly the same age with the King, but also dis-
tinguished by him with peculiar favour, and frequent
personal intercourse. All the three members of this
singular triumvirate were still living when I visited
England; now the astronomer is the only survivor."
" With good reason did Cuvier, in the panegyric he pro-

^ Maoaulay, yii. 25.

SIR JOSEPH BANKS 241

nounced on Sir Joseph before the French Academy,
assert that whenever a worthy disciple, or Tnan of
letters, feU in his way, he opened to them his treasv/res
of nature with the greatest liberality J' Herschel ex-
perienced from him the full benefit of this generous,
ungrudging nature.

Following the example of his predecessor in office as
President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph, possessed
of an ample fortune which enabled him to indulge the
generosity of his heart, gave receptions to learned men
and travellers on Sunday evenings. The stranger thus
describes what he then saw. " I found the veteran in
the middle library, in full dress, with the broad ribbon
of the order of the Bath over his shoulder and breast ; ^
just as he used to appear when presiding at the meet-
ings of the Royal Society. Being infirm in the feet.
Sir Joseph sat in an arm-chair on rollers, his left arm
resting on a table near him.* He was, it is true,
scarcely more than the outward shell of a mind
formerly so animated; both his apprehension and
recollection being weak ; but his features bore a most
engaging expression. Every stranger was at least
announced to him, and if he had anything to shew or
communicate, he immediately laid it before him."

This generous, noble-hearted man did much to soften
the horrors of war in the long and bloody strife be-
tween this country and France. " During the voyage
of La Perouse, the French circumnavigator, he induced

^ As he is represented in the portrait of him painted by Phillips, in
the possession of the Boyal Society.

' For fourteen or fifteen years previous to his death, he lost the use
of his lower limbs so completely from gout as to oblige him to be
carried or wheeled by his servants in a chair : in this way he was
conveyed to the more dignified chair of the Royal Society.

16

242 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

the British Government to allow him to sail in all
seas unmolested. He himself endeavoured, by means
of his extensive correspondence, to procure some cer-
tain accounts as to the disastrous result. When a
considerable collection of natural curiosities, which
Labillardiere had sent to France during his voyage,
fell into the hands of English privateers, and became
the property of the English Government, Sir Joseph
generously exerted his influence again, and the result
was that the cases were immediately sent to France,
without having even been opened." ^

A king, a landed gentleman of great wealth, and a
musician from Bath formed the triumvirate in science,^
of which our countrymen used to speak, and were
deservedly proud for twenty years before and for
twenty after the beginning of the present century.
All three were dead, but they were survived for a
quarter of a century or more by a lady, who made her-
self famous in science and wore her well-won honours
with the modesty of true deserving — Caroline Lucretia
Herschel, the devoted sister and unwearied assistant
of her brother William. With touching pathos she
writes to Francis Baily in 1835, "It encourages me
now to address you as an old friend, and I might
almost say my only one, for death has not spared me
one of those valuable men of the last century in whose
society I had an opportunity of spending many happy
hours, when they came to pass an astronomical night
at Bath, Datchet, Clay Hall, and Slough." She re-

^ This international courtesy was thus shown on no fewer than eleYen
occasions, and some of the coUections are ''now of inestimable yalue"
(1896) : Hooker, JoumaZ^ etc., p. zxziii.

" Niemeyer, Scots Magaasinet i. (1823), pp. 692-93.

HONOURS TO CAROLINE HERSCHEL 243

mained, to the end of her long life, the same loving
worshipper of departed greatness that she had been
during her brother's lifetime, and the same outspoken
critic of men and women whom she happened to meet.
Thirteen years after she left England, she wrote:
"Within the last two months I have been obliged to
exert myself once more to answer two letters, one to
Mr. De Morgan, the Secretary of the Royal Astrono-
mical Society, the other to Mr. Baily (who, I suppose,
is President), for they have been pleased to choose me,
along with Mrs. Somerville, to be a member (God
knows what for) of their Society." Promotion! she
says, they call it in Hanover, and laughingly talks of
" our Society, of which I am now a fellow ! " She
was then eighty-five years of age. Apparently she
was of the same mind as Hannah More, who, when
she found her name proposed as an honorary member
of the Royal Society of Literature, wrote a strong
remonstrance, declining the distinction, chiefly "be-
cause I consider the circumstance of sex alone a
disqualification." ^

In November 1838 she was also elected an honorary
member of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin: and
besides she received in 1846, from the King of Prussia,
a gold medal for science. Well earned though both of
these honours were, she wrote with the modesty of
true science, when she heard of the former, " I cannot
help crying out aloud to myself, every now and then,
* What is That for V . . . 1 think almost it is mocking
me to look upon me as a Member of an Academy : I
that have lived these eighteen years (against my will
and intention) without finding as much as a single

^ Life, ii. 307, December 23, 1820. She was then seventy-five.

244 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

comet." At the same time she could flare up with
true feminine fire when it seemed to her that her
dignity, as a woman of science, was in any degree
infringed. "This puts me in mind of Olbers saying
somewhere,*' she wrote, " I had discovered five comets.
Who wanted him to give the number of w/y comets when
he knew them no better ? As far as I recollect, Dr.
Maskelyne has observed them all, and his observations
on them are, I daresay, all printed in the volumes of the
Greenwich observations — at least of some he has shown
me the proof sheets. I never called a comet mine till
several post days were passed without any account of
them coming to hand." She was then ninety-two years
of age, and Olbers had died more than two years before.

Caroline Herschel maintained to the close of her
days the same habits of thrift, the same dread of not
getting the two ends to meet, and the same foresight
in providing means for ends that characterised her
early life. She enjoyed a pension of £50 a year from
the Civil List — a small allowance for so deserving a
recipient. She had also an annuity of £100 settled
on her by her brother's will — a small return, we should
say, for the invaluable services she rendered, but a
sum which she probably regarded as unnecessarily
taken out of her " dear nephew's " pocket. " Let the
time come when it may please God," she writes in
her eighty-fifth year, "I leave cash enough behind
to clear me from all and any obligations to all who
here do know me. Even the expenses of a respectable
funeral lie ready to enable my friend Mrs. Beckedorff,
and one of my nieces to fulfil my directions.

"I hope you will pardon my troubling you with
such doleful subjects, but I wish to show you that

DISTANCES OF THE STARS 245

my income is by one third more than I have the
power to spend, for by a twelve years' trial I find
that I cannot get rid of more than 600 thl. = £100 per
year, without making myself ridiculous."

Her thoughts were not set on money, or on the
respect which money, honourably earned, usually
brings. The memory of the "best and dearest of
brothers" clung to her with an all-absorbing power.
It was her first and her last love. " You have made
me completely happy for some time," she wrote from
Hanover to his son, " with the account you sent me of
the double stars ; but it vexes me more and more that
in this abominable city there is no one who is capable
of partaking in the joy I feel on this revival of your
father's name. His observations on double stars were
from first to last the most interesting subject; he
never lost sight of it in his papers on the construction
of the heavens, etc. And I cannot help lamenting
that he could not take to his grave with him the satis-
faction I feel at present in seeing his son doing him
so ample justice by endeavouring to perfect what he
could only begin." When Sir John Herschel delivered
the address that preceded the handing over to Bessel
of the Astronomical Society's Gold Medal for deter-
mining, by means of the heliometer, the distance from
us of the double star 61 Cygni, she was heart and soul
with him when he said, "Gentlemen, I congratulate
you and myself that we have lived to see the great
and hitherto impassable barrier to our excursions into
the sidereal universe — that barrier against which we
have chafed so long and so vainly — ^almost simultane-
ously overleaped at three different pointa"^ He

^ Astron, Soc, Trans, xii. 448-53.

246 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

described this discovery of the distance of a fixed star
as the greatest and most glorious triumph which prac-
tical astronomy has perhaps ever witnessed, and the
three who shared the triumph between them were
Bessel with 61 Cygni, Henderson ^ of Edinburgh with
a Centauri, and Struve of Dorpat with a Lyras. BesseFs
object-glass, that he got cut in two to form a helio-
meter. Sir John saw at Munich before it was mounted,
considered it invaluable, and believed that genius alone
could have dared to divide it in two for the purposes
of science. Caroline Herschel's delight, in her retire-
ment, at the success of these three astronomers in
following her baflBied brother's lead may be imagined.
To know that the parallax of a fixed star had been
found by Bessel to be the 3^ of a second ! To know
that it was a double star ! To know, besides, that the
smaller of the two companion stars revolved round
the larger in an orbit fifty times the diameter of the
earth's orbit round the sun, or two and a half times
that of Uranus! and to know also that the pair of
stars were 670,000 times as distant from us as is the
sun ! To her these discoveries were a delightful com-
mentary on her brother's words — " In this case, millions
of years are perhaps but moments." The "little old
woman " in the " abominable city " of Hanover, unable
to endure " happy England," where her dead hero was
buried, and where his son, her nephew, was a foremost
name in the world of science, revelled in the news that

* It is only just to Henderson to say that he was preferred by Lord
Advocate Jeffrey to the Edinburgh Professorship of Astronomy over
his rival, Thomas Carlyle. Froude was guilty of an unpardonable
blunder in printing the unwise and acrimonious criticism of Carlyle on
Henderson's fitness for the post. Facts had given a verdict in Hender-
son's favour.

LIVES OF WILLIAM HERSCHEL 247

were brought her of hopes at last fulfilled, and thought
longingly of the seven-feet reflector, with which she
used to sweep the heavens, as it stood in the room
beside her, but which she should never use again.

"How I envy you having seen Bessel," she wrote
to her nephew in 1842 — " the man who found us the
parallax of 61 Cygni." ^

" The seven-foot shall stand in my room, and be my
monument," she wrote to her nephew in 1823; what
to do with it was a puzzle to her. Her sweeper she
thought of leaving to her girlhood's friend's daughter.
Miss BeckedorfF, but in 1840 it was consigned to " the
hands of the good, honest creature, Dr. Hausmann."
"The five-foot Newtonian reflector," she wrote that
same year,^ " is in the hands of the Royal Astronomical
Society, and will be preserved by it as the little tele-
scope of Newton is by the Royal Society, long after
I and all the little ones are dead and gone." It was
a source of justifiable pride to her as she neared the
end.

Faithful to the memory and greatness of her de-
parted brother, she resented every attempt at an
imperfect or unworthy presentation of his life and
works. What she should have done herself, and she
had better means than others of doing it truthfully
and faithfully, she left to the ignorant or the conceited
to attempt. She could only rail at their efforts, and
wish they had left the work alone. It was not just
to them or to him. The world wishes to know some-
thing of those whose greatness of mind or achievement
has enriched humanity or extended its knowledge of

^ Memoirs, p. 327.

a " Five-foot Newtonian sweeper," Memoirs, p. 91.

248 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

nature. Herschel had done so in a pre-eminent degree.
With good reason, then, the world said. Tell us about
him; his faults, if he had any, we can forgive and
forget ; his virtues we can admire or follow. Caroline
Herschel did not take this view of her duty. She
left it to others to write what she could have written
better, and to record what she knew at first hand, and
they did not know at all or only as dull echoes of a
resounding past. " The Germans are very busy about
the fame of your dear father," she writes ; " there does
not pass a month but something appears in print,
and Dr. Groskopf saw it stated that Professor Pfaff
had translated all your dear father's papers from
the Phil, Trans, into German, and which will be
published in Dresden. I wish he had left it for some
good astronomer to do the same." Evidently the
acid of her temper had been called into action by
Professor PfaflF. Her nephew describes him in reply
as '* a respectable mathematician, and I hope it is he
who undertakes the work." " Johann Wilhelm Pfafif,"
she answers, " professor, in Erlangen, is the same who
intends to translate your father's papers, but those
only which he can get a copy of. The Ph^sophuaZ
TraTiaactions, I am told, are not within his reach."
The acid is a little sweetened; not much, and it is
clear that Caroline Herschel at eighty-five does not
differ in temper at least from the same lady at twenty-
two. Alas ! her inventory of books, pictures, etc., showed
what she thought of the Professor's two- volume edition
of her brother's collected works, "Abominable stuff!
What is to be done with them ? They are so prettily
bound, I cannot take it in my heart to bum them."
But she could lash with her tongue everybody who

HERSCHEL'S PICTURE 249

even praised her dead hero. "Now we talk of bio-
graphies," she wrote twelve years afterwards, " I have
no less than nine of my poor brother, and heard of
two more, one by Zach, which I shall try to get sight
of. There is but one or two which are bordering on
truth, the rest being stuff, not worth while to fret
about. The best is accompanied with a miniature of
Reberg's bad copy." "Bordering on truth! stuff!"
Her description of her own racy letters is equally
amusing: "I was in hopes you would have thrown
away such incoherent stuff . . . and not to let it rise
in judgment against my, perhaps, bad grammar, bad
spelling, eta"

Even a small matter became great where his name
was concerned. " The following hint is only to you as
a dear sister," she writes to her brother's widow, " for
as such I now know you: — All I am possessed of is
looked upon as their own, when I am gone ; the dis-
posal of my brother's picture is even denied me — it
hangs in Mrs. H.'s drawing-room, where a set of old
women play cards under it on her club day." Summary
also was her judgment of anyone who attempted to
rival or surpass her brother: "The fellow is a fool."
Great was her excitement on learning that her nephew
was preparing to complete in the southern hemisphere
the gauging of the heavens, which his father had
begun, and for many a year carried on in the northern.
That was allowable. It was a war trumpet blown
within hearing of a war horse, that had served its last
campaign. " Dr. Tias, who travelled through Hanover,
called on me to-day," she writes to Lady Herschel.
" He talked strangely about my nephew's intention of
going to the Cape of Good Hope. Mr. Hausmann told

2SO HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

me some weeks ago that the Times contained the same
report, to which I replied, ' It is a lie ! ' but what I
heard from Dr. Tias to-day makes me almost believe it
possible. Ja ! if I was thirty or forty years younger,
and could go too? In Gottes nahmen! But I will
not think about it till you yourself tell me more of it,
for I have enough to think of my cramps, blindness,
sleepless nights, etc." She was a wonderful " little old
woman." Pointed at on the street, honoured by the
Palace, and saluted with prof oundest respect at theatre
or concert, she wrote, "Next to listening to the con-
versation of learned men, I like to hear about them,
but I find myself, unfortunately, among beings who
like nothing but smoking, big talk on politics, wars and
such like things." Her indignation flamed up as fiercely
when she was ninety years of age as it used to do when
she was twenty, especially at anyone who took her
for what she was not, weak of will or understanding.
" Thank God, I have yet sense enough left to caution
you against being imposed upon by a stupid being,
who would make you believe I died under obligations
to any of the family. I know he has already, without
asking my leave, passed himself off" for my guardian,
and is vexed at my being able to do without him.
But I could not live without that little business of
keeping my accounts ; and by my last book of expenses
and receipts may be seen, that I owe nothing to any
body, but to my dear nephew many many thanks for
fulfilling his father's wishes, by paying for so many
years the ample annuity he left me." What a brave
little old woman she was ! Nobody but herself was at
liberty to call her "an old poor sick creature in her
dotage."

"DECAYING: LESS CORRUPTION" 251

Sometimes at the theatre to be seen and saluted by
all, sometimes at the palace to be honoured by the
King's brother as his countrywoman, sometimes in
correspondence with scientific men, and hearing of
their achievements, she maintained to the last her
cheerful interest in life. Though her eyesight was
failing, and she could " hardly find the line again she
had just been tracing by feeling on paper," her nephew
writes of her in 1832, " She runs about the town with
me, and skips up her two pair of stairs as light and
fresh at least as some folks I could name, who are not a
fourth part of her age. ... In the morning till eleven
or twelve she is dull and weary, but as the day
advances she gains life, and is quite * fresh and funny '
at ten or eleven p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, even
dances ! to the great delight of all who see her." It
is such a picture of four score as Cicero would have
been overjoyed to prefix as a frontispiece to his treatise
on " Old Age," had it been available in his day. She
spoke in her usual spirit of drollery of "her brittle
constitution," and looked for it going to pieces in the
great heats of summer fourteen years before it did.
"My complaint is incurable," she says, "for it is a
decay of nature. . . . What a shocking idea it is to be
decaying ! decaying ! But, never mind — if I am decay-
ing here, there will be as Mrs. Maskelyne once was
comforting me (on observing my growing lean) the
less corruption in my grave!" But, in view of the
end, it is always to " the best and dearest of brothers,"
to her " dear nephew," and to her namesake, his little
daughter, that her thoughts revert. She enjoyed the
present ; she revelled and lived in the past. " I have
now received in all five letters," she writes to Lady

252 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope. " ELach time after
having read them over again they are put by, under
thanksgiving to the Almighty, with a prayer for future
protection."

" Writing to my absent friends is one of the most
laborious employments I could fly to when under
bodily and, of course, mental sickness, for it is not
impossible I might, instead of making inquiry about
my little precious grand-nephew, and the young ladies,
who play, sing and sew so prettily, write, 'Oh! my
back, O ! I have the cramp here, there,' eta" She is
nearing the end of life, " going many nights to bed
without the hope of seeing another day." But the old
spirit of drollery, and the lifelong love of science are
constantly flashing out " I could not live without that
little business of keeping my accounts," she writes, and
shows herself true to a woman's household-place, and
to science at the same time. " I hope people in England
will never go such lengths in foolery as they do here."
At Christmas time, " Cooks and housemaids present one
another with knitted bags and purses, the cobbler's
daughter embroidered neck-cushions for her friend the
butcher's daughter, which are made up by the uphol-
sterer at great expense, lined with white satin, the
upper part, on which the back is to rest, is worked
with gold, silver, and pearls." And, drollest of all, she
adds, " Writing this, puts me in mind that I never could
remember the multiplication table, but was obliged to
carry always a copy of it about me."

A last gratification, and certainly not the least of
the many she enjoyed during her retirement, was the
placing in her hands of her nephew's completion in
South Africa of his father's survey of the heavens.

NEARING THE END 253

It was a work of devotion to a father's memory and
greatness, executed with untiring zeal and sometimes
at the risk of broken bones. She was unable to read
this record of the splendid work her nephew accom-
plished, when four years of laborious research, and a
longer period of study were at last crowned with
presenting to the world a book, of which " it may be
safely said, that no single publication, during the last
century, has made so many and such considerable
additions to our knowledge of the constitution of the
heavens." What she could not read herself, another
read for her, as her nephew recommended when he
sent her a copy of the work.

As the end of life and activity drew nearer, there is
no longer the same desire to live she felt in previous
years: "I have been very ill and confined to my
room now three weeks, but it seems the Destroying
Angel has passed away, at which I am very glad,
because I wish to be a little better prepared for making
my exit than I am at present." She was then eighty
years of age. A few years later she began to feel
more keenly the sadness of life, and the longing for
something better than it ever gives. Many of the best
and brightest minds have felt as she felt when she
wrote these words : " The whole of yesterday I had no
other prospect but that it would have been the last of
the days of sorrow, trouble and disappointment I have
spent from the moment I had any recollection of my
existence, which is from between my third and fourth
year. ... In the night I fell out of one fainting fit
into another, and when I came to my recollection, be-
tween six and 'seven in the morning, I found Dr. G.
sitting before me talking loud in his usual nonsensical

2 54 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

way. Him had Betty called in her fright, for his wife
(who is of use to nobody) is gone to spend the summer
months in the country." Even in the presence of death
and in the ninetieth year of her age, the old spirit of
drollery gives piquancy to her views of men and women.
In committing to paper her last reflections on the dis-
appointments of life, she writes : You " will see what a
solitary and useless life I have led these seventeen
years, all owing to not finding Hanover, nor any one in
it, like what I left, when the best of brothers took me
with him to England in August, 1772 !" In reality it
was she herself, dissatisfied with earth, who was longing
for something better than earth can give. She tells us
what it was in the epitaph that she wrote on herself,
and that was graven on her tomb : —

Here rests the earthly exterior of

CAROLINA HERSCHEL,

Bom at Hanover, March 16, 1750,
Died January 9, 1848.

The eyes of Her who is glorified were here below turned to the
starry Heavens. Her own Discoveries of Comets, and her par-
ticipation in the immortal Labours of her Brother, William
Herschel, bear witness of this to future ages.

The Royal Irish Academy of Dublin and the Royal Astronomical
Society of London enrolled Her name among their members.

At the age of 97 years 10 months she fell asleep in calm rest
and in the full possession of her faculties, following into a better
Life her Father, Isaac Herschel, who lived to the age of 60 years
2 months 17 days, and lies buried not far off, since the 29th of
March 1767.

Were it not for the unquestionable authority with
which it comes to us that she wrote this account of her
death with her own hand, we might be disposed to

FAIRY PRINCE; SLEEPING PRINCESS 255

feel the same doubts about the authorship, that critics
generally feel about the authorship of the last chapter
of the Book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses is com-
monly supposed to have recorded his own death and
funeral. And thus closes the wonderful story of William
Herschel and his sister Caroline, the story of the fairy
prince of science coming to the sleeping princess of the
heavens to awake her and all her company from the
sleep of ages on the one hand, and, on the other, the
story of the despised household drudge, Cinderella,
taking a place, a deserved place, among the laurelled
benefactors of humanity. Future ages are certain to
witness many histories of men and women, of fairy
princes and ragged Cinderellas, uniting perseverance
to genius, prosaic detail to lofty imaginings. Other
women since her time have shrined their names as
worthy travellers among the stars ; but, while they may
never eclipse the brightness of the sunshine I have
endeavoured to picture in this little book, Encke's
homage will be echoed by all time — "A lady whose
name is so intimately connected with the most brilliant
astronomical discoveries of the age, and whose claims
to the gratitude of every astronomer will be as con-
spicuous as her own exertions for extending the
boundaries of our knowledge, and for assisting to
develop the discoveries by which the name of her
great brother has been rendered so famous throughout
the literary world."

APPENDIX

(Page 44)

In the short notice of his early life communicated by
Herschel in 1783 to the editor of the Gottingen Magazine of
Science and Literature, Herschel says little of that part of
his residence in England which preceded his discovery by
Dr. Watson in 1779. What he does say may be summed
up in his own words :—

I remained "in the army, however, until I reached my
nineteenth year [1757], when I resigned and went over to
England. My familiarity with the organ, which I had
carefully mastered previously, soon procured for me the
position of organist in Yorkshire, which I finally exchanged
for a similar situation at Bath in 1766, and while here the
peculiar circumstances of my post, as agreeable as it was
lucrative, made it possible for me to occupy myself once more
with my studies, especially with mathematics." ^ "A similar
situation at Bath in 1766" seems to refer to the Octagon
Chapel, and is so stated in his sister's Memoirs, But there
are serious objections to this account of his removal from
Halifax to Bath.

In October 1822 there appeared in the New MontJdy
Magazine, of which Thomas Campbell, the poet, was then
editor, an obituary notice of Herschel, which gave another
and a fuller version of his removal to Bath. Unfortunately,

1 Professor Holden, Life and Works of Svr William Herschel^ p. 4.
17

258 APPENDIX

though the admiration and friendship of the poet for the
astronomer are well known, it contains mistakes in dates,
otherwise ascertained. " He was master of the band of a
regiment which was quartered at Halifax in the year 1770"
may be true, but "where he continued for many years"
cannot be correct. It may also be true, though it seems to
conflict with Southey's story, that he obtained the post of
organist for the newly erected organ in that town through
the influence of Joah Bates, son of the parish clerk. The
story then proceeds : " Disliking the monotony of a coimtry
town, he removed with his brother to Bath, where they
were both engaged for the Pump-room band by the late
Mr. Linley, who then conducted the first musical entertain-
ments established in that city, and where the dehghtful
warblings of his siren daughters, Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs.Tickel,
will ever be remembered. Sir William was, like his nephew
Griesbach, esteemed an excellent performer on the oboe, as
his brother was on the violoncello."

This connection of Linley with Herschel is not referred to
by Caroline in her Memoirs, But it derives importance from
the fact that, according to her testimony, there were, or seem
to have been, disagreeable passages between them. At any
rate there is good reason to believe that Herschel did not
remove from Halifax to Bath, as has generally been given
out, to become organist in the Octagon Chapel in 1766.
"The Chapel was built in 1766, and opened for divine
service in December 1767." Herschel had been more than
a year in Bath at that time ; he had also been giving concerts
on his own account, as his sister gives us distinctly to under-
stand, and on January 3, 1767, he returns thanks, through the
Bath Chronicle, to the company who did him the honour of
attending his concert.^ He informs them at the same time
that he teaches the guitar as well as singing, and takes

1 1 am indebted for these facts to the kindness of Mr. Stnrge Cotterell,
of Bath.

APPENDIX 259

pupils for the harpsichord and violin. That one of the
principal memhers of the Pump-room band should be
appointed organist in the newly erected Octagon Chapel
is most likely, and he seems to have occupied the post for
about nine years. ''He took great delight in a choir of
singers who performed the cathedral service at the Octagon
Chapel, for whom he composed many excellent anthems,
chants, and psalm tunes." Caroline Herschel adds: ''This
anthem was left with the rest of my brother's sacred com-
positions, which were left in trust with one of the choristers.
. . . All is lost. . . . With difficulty, many years after, one
Te Deum was recovered, and when I was in Bath in 1800 I
obtained two or three torn books of odd parts." It is
difficult to understand why the compositions were left at all,
still more to understand what Mr. Linley had to do with the
matter, for " the chorister's wife openly charged Mr. Linley
with having taken possession of these treasures." ^

The story in Campbell's magazine proceeds : " Sir William
pursued his profession at Bath for some years, highly esteemed
by a numerous circle of friends, and increasing in fame and
fortune." Whether this was fact or poetic licence may be
matter of debate ; but the words attributed by the writer to
King George iii., that "Herschel should not sacrifice his
valuable time to crotchets and quavers," may justly be
accepted as genuine. And the two sentences with which the
notice concludes go far to prove that the writer of it was the
poet-editor himself: "Sir William possessed 'the milk of
human kindness' in an eminent degree, and was most
anxious to gratify his numerous visitors by explaining 'the
complicated machinery of his mind ' in the simplest manner
possible. No one ever returned from his hospitable cottage
without feeling gratified with the urbanity of the man, and
improved by the productions of his genius."

A relic of these early days is still preserved at Bath in the

1 MemcirSf note at p. 39.

26o APPENDIX

pieces of the organ on which Herschel played, and which
may again be erected as a memorial of the great astronomer
in the city that was the birthplace of his fame.

Evidently Herschel's views of the heavens left an abiding
impression on Campbell's mind.^ Eighteen years after his
first meeting with Herschel, and nine after the astronomer's
death, he became acquainted with Pond, then Astronomer-
Royal, whose " most interesting and instructive " conversation
he likens to " a gift from Providence." He then proceeds to
say : " I had lately been dabbling in the astronomical relics of
the Greek Alexandrian school, and had the idea of embodying
my notes on ancient geography into a regular history, when
this Life of Mrs, Siddons suspended my intention. But I
have of late been so interested in the subject, that I
revised my mathematics, the better to understand the
histories of ancient science given by Ideler and Delambre.
Mr. Pond's conversation has been, therefore, eagerly sought
by me, — and he is most aflfably communicative.

"We have just been gazing on Jupiter and his moons,
through a glass that makes Jove appear as large as the
sun's disk, and his satellites like ordinary stars ! The moon
appears through it as large as a church. His opinion of her
ladyship is that she is not inhabited — ^there being no atmo-
sphere — and the whole region, probably, only ice and snow.
Strange enough that a body, which creates such lively
crotchets in so many human brains, should itself be cold and
lifeless."

Campbell's poetry, whether in prose or verse, would
probably have been more worth reading than Dr. Bumey's
astronomical poem, but neither of them ever saw the light of
day. One thing Campbell relates. Mrs. Pond, he says,
"when I first saw her, as she was walking — shortly after
their marriage — was a young, fair, and graceful woman, arm
in arm with her very plain and elderly husband. There was
1 See above, pp. 207-9. * Beattie, Life of Campbelly iii. 94.

r

APPENDIX 261

an epigram in the newspaper about them. Mr. Pond had
published some remarks on the planet ' Venus,' and the wit
asked him, 'Why he troubled himself about Venus in the
skies, when he had got Venus beside him on earth 1 ' "

The enthusiasm shown in Campbell's account of his inter-
view with Herschel, however, does not appear to have been so
lasting as could be wished. In his lines '* To the Bainbow,"
written six years after j in 1819, he says —

'^When Science from Creation's face
Enchantment's veil withdraws,
What lovely yisions yield their place
To cold material laws ! "

The idea, like the feet in the last line, is somewhat
halting.

INDEX

Amici, 121.
Asteroids, 72, 191.

Banks, Sir Joseph, 111, 239.
Bath, as seen by Smollett, 2 ; by
Horace Walpole, 46.
,, housekeeping at, 83.
Brewster, Sir David, 102, 284.
Bolman (Leeds), 88.
Barney, opinion of Jacob Herschel,
82.
,, visit to Slough, 201.
Bumey (Fanny), Windsor gossip,
197,

Campbell, interview with Herschel,

206.
,, New MomMy Magfoziney

257.
Catalogues of stars, 138, 227.
Comets, 198.

Dollond, 109.

Eighteenth century, 41.
Equerries at Windsor, 60.
Eros, discovery of, 71.
Error, limits of, 58.

Facio Duillier, eclipse of 1706,

61.
Ferguson's Astronomyy 43.
Fraunhofer, 99, 127.

GaHleo, 99, 107.
Gauges of stars, 141.

George iii., a lover of astronomy, 84.

delays in dealing with
Herschel, 90.

Triumvirate, 289.
Georgium Sidus, 75.
Glasgow, visits to, 204.
Greenwich Observatory, 52.

instruments, 88.

i>

*»

*t

263

Halley, eclipse of 1715, 63.

„ flattery to Charles ii., 77.
Hanover, society in, 84, 251.
Harding, asteroid Juno, 72.
Herschel, Caroline Lucretia, 8.

relations towards her

brothers, 8.
Cinderella, 6, 255.
a concert singer, 28.
not successful, 82, 88.
in England, 29.
word-portrait of her, 30,

250.
the Lady's Comet, 81.
her pension, 81 ; unpaid,

114.
honours paid to her, 243.
view of Lives of her

brother, 247.
life in Hanover, 251.
views on servants and
workpeople, 84, 115,
252.
Herschel, Sir John F., decline of
science in England, 97.
distance of stars, 245.
Cape of Good Hope, 249.

»»
>»

n
>>

if
It

264

INDEX

Henchel, Sir WilliAm, birth, 8.
father of, 6.
mother's foolishneas, 8,

9, 18, 21.
schooldays of, 11.
knowledge of languages,

12.
musical and mechanical

abiUty, 13.
astronomy, 14.
visit to ^gland, 16.
flight from Hanover,

19.
engagements in England,

24, 257.
visit to Itoly, 26.
removes to Bath, 27.
gives concerts there, 27,

258.
appointed to Octagon

Chapel, 28, 258.
race for fame, 32.
work in Bath, 85.
drought by day, frost by

night, 89.
discovery of, 47.
aims in observing, 53.
length of earth's day, 66.
''Accountof aComet," 68.
Uranus, 73.
Cataloffue of Double

Stars, 80.
contributions to Phil,

Trans,, 81.
Copley Medid, 84.
public opinion, 85.
summoned to court, 86.
''showman of the

heavens,'' 89.
no honour bestowed till

1816, 94.
encouragement of science,

96.
disparagement of his

work, 101, 222.
King's Astronomer, 103.
polishing his great

mirror, 112.
his ingenuity, 117.
accidents, 119.

if

it
}$

)f

9*
ti

t1

ti

>i
It
ti

it

tt
it
ti

a
It
it
It
If
tt

ti

ti
it
ti
it

9i

ti

tt

it
ti

it
tt

Herschel, requiem of telescope, 125.
reviews of the heavens,

129.
simplicity and kindness,

209, 259.
faiUng health, 210.
religious sentiments, 215.
Arago's eulogium, 217.
Huggins, Sir William, 229.

ti
it

it
it
it

Jupiter, 175.

Keats, 91.

Laboratories of universe, 139.
Lalande, 40, 51, 58, 77, 88, 105.
Linley, Pump*room band, 27, 258.
,, his daughter's singing, 28.

Mars, 173.

Maskelyne, honoured by the

French, 86.
Mercury, 168.
Messier, 111.
Micrometer, 80.
Milky Way, 143, 233.
Moon, mountains, 54.

,, volcanoes, 56.

,, atmosphere, 60.
More, Hannah, 29.

Napoleon, 207.

Nebulse, relative antiquity, 147.
,, resolvable and gaseous,
228.
Nebular hypothesis, 235.
Newton, encouragement to, 97.

,, his telescope, 107.
Niemeyer, 26.

Olbers, discovery of asteroids, 72.
, , absorption of light by ether,
147.

Pfaff, 248.

Piazzi, 72, 119.

Points and blunts, war of, 51.

Pringle, Sir John, 51.

Rosse, Lord, 121.

INDEX

265

Saturn, 176.
Schroeter, 169.
Stannyan, Oaptain, 60.
Stars, periodical, 51.

changes among, 130.
double, 219.
spectra of, 226.
growth of, 227.
unity of design in, 228.
distance of, 245.
Southey, story of Herschel, 25,

257.
Sun, total eclipses of, 1706, 1715,
61.
corona and red flames of, 62.
moTements, 185.
spectrum of, 157.

ft
ft

tt

Sun, heat, light, and chemical rays,
159.
,, spots, 161.

Telescope, price-catalogue in 1771,
105.

sales of, 122.

refractors. 111, 127.
Triumvirate, the, 289.

if

Uranus, 186.

Venus, 169.

Walpole, 46, 151.

Watson, William, and William
Watson, jun., 47.

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A GREAT BIBLICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA.

* If the other yolaines come up to the standard of the first, this Dictionary seems
likely to take its place as the standard authority for biblical students of the present
generation.'— Timef.

To be Completed In Poor Volomes, imperial 8vo (of nearly MO pages each).
Price per Volume, in dotb, 288, ; in ball morocco, 348.,

A DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE,

DaaUag with its Language, Lftarature, and Contants,
including tha Biblical Tbaology,

Edited by JAMES HASTINGS, M.A., D.D., with the Assistance of J. A.
Selbie, M.A., and, chiefly in the Bevision of the Proofs, of A. B.
Davidbon, D.D., LL.D., Edinburgh; S. B. Dbiyxr, D.D., LittD.,
Oxford ; and H. B. Swbts, D.D., Lltt.D., Cambridge.

Full Prospectus, with Specimen Pages, from all Booksellers, or

from the Publishers,

* We offer Dr. Hastings our sincere congratulations on the publication of the first
instalment of this great enterprise. ... A work was urgently needed which should
present the student with the approved results of modem inquiry, and which should
also acquaint him with the methods by which theol(^cal xuroblems are now approached
by the most learned and devout of our theologians.' — Qvardicm.

*We welcome with the utmost cordiality the first volume of Messrs. Clark's great
enterprise, " A Dictionary of the Bible." That there was room and need for such a
book is unquestionable. . . . We have here all that the student can desire, a work of
remarkable fulness, well up to date, and yet at the same time conservative in its
general tendency, almost faultlessly accurate, and produced by the publishers in a most
excellent and convenient style. We can thoroughly recommend it to our readers as a
book which should fully satisfy their anticipations. . . . This new Dictionary is one of
the most important aids that have recently been furnished to a true understanding of
Scripture, and, properly used, will brighten and enrich the pulpit work of every
minister who possesses it. . . . We are greatly struck by the excellence of the short
articles. 'Diey are better done than in any other work of tiie kind. We have compared
several of them with their sources, and this shows at once the unpretentious labour
that is behind them. . . . Dr. A. B. Davidson is a tower of strength, and he shows at his
best in the articles on Angels, on Covenant (a masterpiece, full of illumination), and on
Es(^tology of the Old Testament. His contributions are the chief ornaments and
treasure-8K>res of the Dictionary. . . . We are very conscious of having done most
inadequate justice to this very valuaUe book. Perhaps, however, enough has been said
to show our great sense of its worth. It is a book that one is sure to be turning to again
and again with increased confidence and gratitude. It will be an evil omen for the
Church if ministers do not come forward to make the best of the opportunity now
presented them.'— Bditor, British Weekly.

< Will give widespread satisfaction. Every person consulting it may rely upon its
trustworthiness. . . . Far away in advance of any other Bible Dictionary that has ever
been published in real usefolness for preachers, Bible students, and teachers.' —
Methodist Recorder,

' This monumental work. It has made a great beginning, and promises to take
rank as one of the most important biblical enterprises of the century.' — Christian
World,

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